Small Spaces
by ndj35
Summary: Wolf gets stuck in an elevator... and he's not alone. Some long overdue romance for our favourite Aussie. Originally inspired by the Valentine's Day Extravaganza 2017. NOW COMPLETE.
1. Elevator

_UPDATE: So this was originally a one off story for the V-Day Extravaganza, but then the plot bunnies took hold, and there is now a chapter 4 and beyond…_

 _Author's note: Okay, so I wrote this in response to a prompt for the Valentine's Day Story Extravaganza, which asked for Wolf stuck in an elevator with a woman. It went through a few iterations in my head, but this is how it ended up!_

 _There are three chapters, and I'll post the next two on Saturday and Sunday. Rated T for now, but likely to hit an M as we go, because things get smutty later on…_

 **Chapter One - Elevator**

Wolf Taylor hefted the paper grocery bag more securely into his arms as he waited for the elevator. The hospital lobby was quiet – but then most buildings were quiet these days, what with the majority of the world's population having been wiped out. Still, St Louis was becoming busier, and with medical personnel still thin on the ground, he guessed Miller had got lucky with this surgery on his busted ankle, which had never been quite right after his spell as a POW.

The elevator arrived and Wolf stepped inside, his ears immediately registering terrible piped music, something that not even the apocalypse had been able to wipe out. Pressing the button for the twelfth floor, he turned to face the doors and just as they were closing, he saw a woman hurrying towards the elevator. Reaching out, he caught the door, prompting them to reopen. The woman smiled her thanks as she joined him, and he registered blonde hair and, of all things, freckles, before he reminded himself not to stare.

"What floor did you need?" He asked, and she smiled again.

"Twelve, please."

He shifted slightly to show her that the button for that floor was already lit, and she nodded. Standing a couple of feet apart – about as much as the small space would allow - they both stared at the closed doors as the elevator started to move upwards.

Her skirt was pretty tight. He'd only noticed it because of the way it slightly restricted her stride as she'd crossed the lobby, but now he was in close proximity, it was really hard not to notice some more, especially when the skirt was showcasing legs as good as hers. And so Wolf looked, because he was human, but he didn't linger, because he liked to think he was better than that. _Besides_ , he thought, _Ravit would kick my arse for being so disrespectful…_ And then he remembered all over again, and had to stop himself from shuddering.

As the floor numbers illuminated in red above the doors, he could have sworn he saw her give him a glance out of the corner of his eye, but before he could take a glance of his own, the elevator shuddered and abruptly stopped, the music cutting out simultaneously, leaving them suspended in silence. The lights flickered out for a second, only to be replaced by dim emergency lighting.

"Okay…" The woman said slowly, and Wolf turned to look at her.

"Power outage?" He suggested. Those were still pretty common in St Louis, even though electricity was technically now available twenty four hours a day.

"I guess." She made a face. "Knew I should have taken the stairs. Serves me right for skipping the workout."

She had a southern accent, a cute smile, and great legs, and he was trying hard not to notice too much, but she smelled bloody fantastic.

"I'm Wolf." He offered, holding out his hand.

She tipped her head to one side, fixing him with a sceptical expression. "Your mom call you that?"

He couldn't help laughing. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, she did."

"I'll take your word for it." She shot him that smile again, and shook his hand. "I'm Riley. There's an emergency call button on that panel, right?"

"Right." He dropped her hand and turned to the panel, hitting the red alarm button. The speaker above the panel gave a slight crackle, but there was nothing more. He pressed the button again, and spoke clearly, "Hello? Anybody there?" Again, a crackle, and again, silence.

Instinctively, he looked up to the hatch in the ceiling, and began to calculate the force needed to jump and open it, but he was distracted by Riley setting her bag down in the corner and making to sit.

"Guess this might take a while." She commented.

Wolf looked up at the hatch again, then at the control panel, then back at Riley. "You think we just wait?"

She looked a little amused. "What else are we going to do? Go all John McClane?"

"Well-" He started, but then reminded himself that he was in a hospital elevator, not on a warship, and tried to relax instead, setting down his own bag and leaning back against the wall. "So you're a Die Hard fan?"

"Isn't everybody?" She deadpanned, then grinned. "With four older brothers, I must have seen every action movie ever made." She gave him a little once over, just a flick of her eyes, but he caught it. "Judging by that uniform, you've probably got a few moves of your own?"

He shrugged, deciding to underplay it. "A few." He conceded, with a slight smile, remembering to keep his eyes on her face, not the legs that had been revealed even further by her posture on the floor.

"Well, save your strength Wolfie, we might need it later."

"My name is Wolf." He said firmly. He'd take Wolf Man from Miller, but Wolfie made him sound like a puppy, and it reminded him of people he didn't want to remember right now.

"My mistake, Mister Wolf." Her smile had turned a little cheeky. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." He shrugged, his eyes straying back to the hatch. It wouldn't be that hard to get out of here.

She ran her hand through her hair, blonde strands falling over her face for a moment before she swept them back. "What are you doing in St Louis?"

"Right now, visiting a mate in hospital." He replied disingenuously, and she gave him a look. "I was in the US on a training exercise when everything went to hell." He conceded. "Got caught up from there."

"You haven't been home?" She asked.

"This is home now." He deflected. "Where are you from?" He asked instead, aiming to turn the conversation firmly away from his past. That wasn't something he talked to his friends about nowadays, let alone a stranger.

"I'm just a nice southern girl, can't you tell?" She exaggerated her accent and gave him a teasing smile.

He narrowed his eyes a little. There was something about her that he couldn't quite put his finger on. For all of her relaxed, teasing manner – which somehow needled him a little – she was guarded underneath, he was sure of it.

He opened his mouth to speak, but then a loud crackle came from the speaker above the control panel. He pressed the alarm button, and the crackle came again, this time accompanied by a voice.

"Hello? This is maintenance. Anyone in there?" The male voice was almost too cheerful.

"Two of us." Wolf answered with a surprisingly strong feeling of relief. "Power out?"

"Generator overloaded. Hang tight, we'll have you moving again as soon as we can. Got to divert power back to the wards first."

Suddenly Riley was by his side, leaning into the speaker. "This is Doctor Riley. Can you make sure one of the other doctors checks my post ops on floor twelve? Ortho ward?"

"Sure doc, will do. Hang tight." One last crackle, and the speaker went dead.

Wolf turned to her. "Doctor Riley, huh?"

She shrugged. "Just Riley will do fine. But I'm guessing you're here to visit… Petty Officer Miller?"

He couldn't help laughing slightly. "You're his surgeon?"

"Yes I am." She settled back onto the floor. "He's a sweet guy."

"You could say that." He allowed.

"Worrying taste in literature though." She nodded towards the grocery bag, and Wolf almost groaned when he registered the lingerie catalogue sticking out of the top.

"It's a joke." He protested.

"Sure, whatever you say." Before he could stop her, she'd scooted over and grabbed the catalogue, leafing through as she returned to her position in the corner. "Interesting…" She turned it around so he could see, the page showing a model in a very tiny underwear set. "This your kind of thing?"

Her teasing manner had been prickling him for a while, but now irritation really blossomed. "I'm sure you got a lot of practice tormenting your brothers, but knock it off, would you? I just came here to see my mate, cheer him up a bit, and I need this-" He gestured around the stationary elevator car, "-like a hole in the head." _Which_ , he acknowledged to himself, _is also about as much as I need a beautiful woman stuck in my eye line right now_.

"Whoa." She dropped the catalogue and held out her hands in surrender. "I'm sorry." She sounded sincere. "I was just messing around. Didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm not upset." He said, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling again, his eyes fixing on the hatch once more. "I'm frustrated."

"Wait…" She got to her feet, reaching out to touch his arm. "Are you claustrophobic?"

"Of course not." He snapped at her, then instantly regretted it. None of this was her fault, and in truth he couldn't understand why it was getting him so riled up.

"But you're sweating, and tense." Her voice was surprisingly gentle, and he lowered his head to look at her, registering that she was right on both counts.

"I'm not claustrophobic. I've been in much smaller spaces than this."

"But not trapped, maybe." She said calmly. "Which is a different thing." She squeezed his arm slightly. "You should sit down. It creates a bigger sense of space."

The last thing he wanted was to admit she was right, to appear weak in front of her – or anyone – but at the same time, he knew she'd nailed it. At least it helped explain his reactions. He sank down to the floor and she came to sit beside him.

"You know, I got a whole new bunch of phobias since the end of the world." She told him. "Don't like to be alone, don't like loud noises… I figure just about all of us are dealing with trauma in one way or another."

"That a medical opinion?" He asked.

"Probably." She replied, and he found himself laughing. He turned his head to look at her properly.

"You don't like to be alone?"

"I share an apartment with the most irritating woman ever to walk the earth, but damn it if the sound of her incessant talking doesn't soothe me." She gave him a helpless kind of smile, and then they both laughed.

As the laughter faded, she kept looking into his face, and he felt like he couldn't look away. He was noticing those freckles again, dusting her nose and cheekbones.

"You're interesting." She said slowly. "For a man who doesn't talk much."

"Maybe you talk too much." He replied, but his eyes were still locked with hers.

"I do other things than talk." She responded, and he suddenly realised that their faces were now only millimetres apart. And the movements hadn't just been from her side.

 _I don't_ , he thought, but then her lips were on his, and they were kissing, and he registered that it was her hair that smelled so good, and he found himself reaching out to pull her closer as her mouth opened, inviting his tongue, inviting more, as her arms wrapped around his neck.

And just as he was about to give in, two things happened simultaneously – he remembered why it was a bad idea, and the elevator shuddered into motion.


	2. Cupboard

_Author's note: Those elevators, eh? Terrible timing…_

 _Please note the change to an M rating - I am nothing if not diligent in my efforts to protect the youth of today from heavy smut._

 _Thank you for the lovely reviews for chapter one, hope you enjoy this next instalment!_

 **Chapter Two - Cupboard**

Wolf abruptly pulled back from Riley, letting her go and turning his attention to the movement of the elevator. "Looks like we're headed for freedom." He said, trying to keep his voice light.

"Guess so." She scrambled to her feet, smoothing her skirt and her hair, and he rose from the floor too, a little more slowly.

She bent to pick up her bag, and he deliberately avoided looking at the curve of her hips, because he'd remembered why this was a very bad idea, and reminding himself how gorgeous she was wasn't going to help. As the doors opened, she stepped straight out of them, before turning and shooting him a wide smile.

"Thanks for the ride, Mr Wolf."

He picked up the grocery bag and shoved the abandoned catalogue in the top, and as he left the elevator, she was already gone. _Probably for the best_ , he told himself, but even as he thought it, he had to fight off a feeling of disappointment.

"Wolf Man!" Miller's face lit up when he saw him at the door of his hospital room, and it helped to lift Wolf out of the strange mood his encounter with Riley had left him in. He grinned as he clasped his friend's hand.

"How are you feeling?" He glanced at the tent over Miller's ankle.

"Feeling no pain." Miller nodded towards the IV, "And the doctor says it's fixed for good." His face split into a grin, "And you should see my doctor! She is hot."

"Oh, really?" Wolf felt that creeping sense of discomfort.

"Seriously, she's beautiful. Blonde, big blue eyes-"

 _Her eyes are green_ , Wolf thought.

"-and she's got amazing legs..." Miller paused. "I admit she's on the older side-"

Wolf had to contain a snort of amusement. Riley couldn't be more than thirty five, tops.

"-but she is fine. No question. "

"I'll take your word for it, Miller. Unless it's the drugs talking." Eager to change the subject, he lifted the grocery bag onto the end of the bed. "Got a few distractions for you from the team."

But of course, as soon as he handed Miller the first item in the bag - that damned lingerie catalogue - he heard a familiar voice from behind him.

"Now come on Eric, what have I told you about not getting excited?"

Wolf saw Miller's face flush as he hastily sought to distance himself from the catalogue.

"Doctor Riley, I was, er, it's not-"

"Oh, don't worry, I know it's all your friend's fault."

Riley was beside him now, and Wolf tried not to look at her, but the scent of her hair had reached him, and it was harder to stay unmoved than he would have liked. _Not a good idea_ , he reminded himself.

"How are you feeling today?" Riley asked Miller. She picked up his chart and started looking through it.

"Some other doctor checked me out earlier-" Miller started, and somehow Wolf knew Riley wasn't going to let him get away with that, even before she spoke.

"Checked you out, huh? Well, we medics do have a soft spot for you boys in uniform."

Miller's face had grown even redder, and Wolf felt that increasingly familiar mix of fierce attraction and mild irritation towards the blonde doctor.

"And I have to say," Riley continued, "You are looking good-" She allowed a tiny pause before tapping the chart, "-here. Everything just fine, and I'll be back to 'check you out' again in a little while." She gave Miller that teasing smile.

Her patient seemed to have temporarily lost the power of speech, and Wolf had no desire to say anything that might give away his earlier encounter with Riley. But just as she reached the doorway and he was about to release a sigh of relief, she turned back for a moment.

"See you later, Mr Wolf." She shot over her shoulder, and then she was gone.

It took Miller a second to process, his mouth falling slightly open. "You know her?!"

"Give me a second, mate." Wolf was out the door before he'd really thought about it, and with long strides, he caught up to Riley within a few paces. She turned with a half amused, half quizzical smile.

"Yes?"

"What is it with you?" He asked, frustration racing through him.

"What is it with you?" She asked. "I thought we were having a little fun in that elevator, but you seem bent out of shape about the whole thing." Her tone was light and teasing, but this time he definitely sensed something underneath, a wariness maybe, a vulnerability, and it drew him to her even more.

"You…" He tried to articulate it, but the problem was, he didn't really know how to finish the sentence, the smell of her hair was too distracting, and yeah, her eyes were definitely green...

And suddenly she was grabbing his hand and pulling him through the nearest door, into a dimly lit, very small, storeroom. And just as suddenly, he was kissing her.

And not just kissing. He lifted Riley into his arms, pushing her back against the door as her legs wrapped around his waist. He could feel the soft curves of her body pressed against his as he hungrily explored her mouth with his tongue, his head filling with the buzz of nothing but want. Her fingers raked through his hair, and her other hand found his bum and unashamedly pushed his hips harder into hers.

The part of him that knew why this was a bad idea had gone into full retreat, overwhelmed by the taste of Riley's mouth, the rough tug of her hand in his hair, the way she was pressing into him as he - _oh fuck_ \- rutted against her, and he was starting to calculate the quickest possible route through their clothes so he could get inside her, when a stray thought caught and snagged and drew just enough of his attention. _It's been such a long time_...

And this time, the gasp he let out into Riley's mouth wasn't one of passion. He stepped back, letting her almost fall from his arms.

"I can't." He managed.

"Wolf?"

He didn't know if it was the concern in her face, or the lack of teasing in her voice, or the fact that she'd finally used his name properly, but he found himself blurting out the truth, the reason he might flirt or look, but would never, could never, go any further than that.

"Women I like, they die." He said bluntly, and without giving her time to react, he pushed past her and out into the corridor, his head spinning.

If Riley followed him, he didn't register it. Instead, he consciously pulled himself together, quickly adjusted his clothing, and did his level best to stroll back into Miller's room as though nothing had happened.


	3. Bed

_Author's note: Here's the third and final instalment. Thank you for reading and reviewing, hope you enjoyed this little tale!_

 **Chapter Three - Bed**

As Wolf lay on the bed in his tiny studio apartment later that evening, he was trying very hard not to think about Riley. Quite apart from anything else, after what he'd said to her, there was no way she'd go near him again, even if he wanted her to. And he was shocked by how much he wanted her to.

So when the knock at the door came, he didn't for a second imagine it would be anyone but one of his neighbours, probably trying to borrow food or money, which was typically the case in post-apocalypse St Louis. He opened the door and of course, Riley was standing on the other side.

"How did you know where to find me?" He asked before she could speak, a little nervous of what she might say. "No, let me guess – Miller."

"That kid idolises you." She pushed past him and into the apartment. "It's sweet, really. Now listen," She turned to face him as he reluctantly closed the door behind her, "I've been thinking about what you said, and I have a proposition for you." She started to undo her coat buttons. "I think that in order to test your no doubt excellent hypothesis, you should screw me blind, and then we'll see if I keel over after." She gave him a dazzling version of that teasing smile, and then opened her coat to reveal that she was completely naked beneath it.

He groaned involuntarily, his eyes raking over her. "Why are you doing this?" He managed, trying to ignore the fact that all of the blood in his body had headed south.

"Because," She stepped close to him, within touching distance, "I like you. And you like me. And the world ended, and we're still here." She reached out and touched his face, and his eyes were drawn to hers. "And," She added, "I really, really, want to get inside that uniform."

His hands were shaking slightly as he placed them on her shoulders, and he watched her bite her lip as he hesitated one last time. And then he hooked his thumbs into the collar of her coat and shoved it down her arms and off, and she leapt into his embrace as he caught her.

It was like the supply closet all over again, her legs wrapped around his waist as their tongues tangled and he swallowed her gasps into his mouth. This time, though, he span and dropped them both onto the bed, letting his hands roam as her legs stayed locked around his waist.

Her skin was soft, and he palmed her breast, feeling the contrasting hardness of her nipple. She arched into his touch and he traced a messy path from her lips to her chest with his tongue before sucking the hard peak into his mouth.

She gasped, and he felt her hands tugging at his shirt, and reared back for a second to wrench it over his head before turning his attention to her other breast. Her hands felt so good on his skin, her fingers digging into his shoulders as his mouth hungrily moved lower, because if he'd thought her hair smelled good, it was nothing compared to the musky scent of her arousal.

He found her centre with his tongue, but he was so desperate to climb inside of her that he could only lick her roughly, her taste just serving to fuel his need. He impatiently shoved down his pants, left his socks where they were, and moved back over Riley, letting her tug on his hair to pull his mouth to hers as he slid home inside of her soaking wet heat.

"Oh Christ-" He choked out, trying to summon some self control, but she was clenched around him like a fist, her legs spread wide, and as he felt her fingers brush his stomach and realised she was touching her own clit, he lost it completely and let himself hammer hard into her, feeling her hips moving with his, until he convulsed and thrust deep one more time, emitting a harsh groan that mingled with her almost pained gasp as he felt the ripple of her inner muscles and they both let go.

He was panting hard as he rolled off of her, his head spinning and senses reeling.

After a few seconds, Riley spoke in wry tones, her breath still coming a little fast. "Not dead yet..."

He let out a laugh that was half choked with a sudden wave of emotion, and laid his arm over his eyes to hide it, fighting for control. But then he heard a small sound from beside him that made him lift his arm and turn his head to see tears pouring down Riley's cheeks.

"Shit, shit. Did I hurt you?" He rolled onto his elbow, looking down at her face.

"No, no!" She wiped away the tears with her hands, but they still kept flowing. "No, I think it's just..." She met his eyes and he saw her swallow. "I haven't done that since... everything."

"Me neither." He said quietly.

She frowned slightly. "What about the girl you liked who-"

He cut her off. "Never got that far."

"Whoa." She said softly.

He reached out and very carefully started to wipe her slowing tears with his thumb. "Her name was Val." He said, "She was just a friend, really."

"You said women, plural." Riley's voice was still so soft, and just as it had in the elevator, it unlocked something in him.

"Ravit." The name rasped slightly in his throat. "She was like a sister to me. I had to watch her die-"

"The virus?"

He shook his head. "She was an operator, like me. She died in combat."

"I'm so sorry." Her hand found his face, and he saw the truth of it in her eyes.

"You kind of remind me of her." He said, realising that was it. "There's something about you..."

"You kind of remind me of someone too." She half smiled for a second, then it faded. "And I watched him die; despite being a doctor, there was nothing I could do."

"Boyfriend?" He asked.

"My brother. The oldest. The other three died first. One in combat, Marine Corps-" She touched his arm, tracing a small scar, "Other two from the virus. I made it home in time to see Matthew but too late to do anything. Just had to watch."

"You were immune?"

She nodded, her eyes returning to his. "I oversaw a hospital of the dead down in Tennessee until the cure came, and then I tried to be the one to rebuild it, but I couldn't take the reminders anymore."

"My whole family died before I got back to Australia." He let the words out more bluntly than he'd ever managed before. "I tried to stay there, but I couldn't. Leapt at the chance to get back out in the danger zone."

She gave him a wry smile that spoke of recognition, and he held out his arms and was half surprised when she willingly rolled into them, cuddling into his chest. He held her close, exhaling a breath that he might just have been holding since the James first docked in St Louis.

"You really think I'm going to die now?" She asked eventually.

"Not really. It was just a good excuse to stay away." He said honestly.

She tipped her head back to look up at him. "Well then, once more won't hurt." She leaned up and found his mouth with hers, and this time the kiss was slow, his hands sliding into her hair.

Everything was slower now. The glide of his hands over her skin, the way she moved over him, teasing him with her lips on his chest before he tugged her back to his mouth. There was something like affection there too, a tenderness filtering through the desire, in the way they stayed pressed together, exploring each other, until she finally took him inside her and rode him lightly, his hands on her hips and then her back, guiding her down so he could kiss her again as she rocked on him. Her lips were against his ear as she shuddered and came apart, and her breathy gasp of, "Wolf!" was enough to tip him over the edge.

Afterwards she lay still draped across his chest, his hands idly stroking over her back. The intimacy he'd been so diligently avoiding was now surrounding them, and he found he didn't mind at all.

"You want to get a drink sometime?" He asked, trying not to smirk.

She laughed a little, raising her head as that teasing smile returning to her face. "You asking me out, Mr Wolf?"

"I am, Dr Riley." He let his mouth curve into a grin. "What's your first name, anyway? You can't be Riley Riley."

"I stopped using it, round about the time everybody started dying. Seemed a little obscene." She paused, and then let out a breath. "Hope. Hope Riley. Because my momma had given up hope of having a girl until I came along."

He laughed, and the smile she shot him in return made him kiss her again, slowly. "I could use a little more hope." He said, trying to keep a straight face, and she slapped his shoulder lightly.

"Now who's doing the teasing?"

"That would be me." He grinned again, kissed her again, and let the truth behind the joke settle comfortably into them both, just the same way that she settled back into his arms, like somehow she belonged there.


	4. On Call Room

_Author's note: So once I finished the original story, suddenly all these ideas started floating into my head for more of these two, and eventually the plot bunnies became too loud to ignore! Can't promise what the timeline will be like in updating and adding new chapters, but here's the next instalment for now!_

 _Thank you for reading, and please consider leaving me a review if you enjoy it._

 **Chapter 4 – On Call Room**

Wolf woke up with a start, instinct telling him something had happened, a noise perhaps, but the studio apartment was silent now. It took him a second to remember that while waking up alone was the norm, on this particular morning, it kind of wasn't; Riley had been here, but a quick glance around confirmed that she was gone.

Flopping back onto the mattress, he found his hand moving to his chest, the place where Riley's head had rested for most of the night. Well, the few hours when they hadn't been having sex, at least. Despite himself, he felt a slight unease. Maybe Riley felt differently in the light of day. Sharing intimacy and secrets had been cathartic for sure, but it could have been too much. She'd left without waking him, or even leaving a phone number, and that had to be a bad sign, didn't it?

Rubbing his hands over his face, he made his way to the tiny bathroom – just a few steps from the bed in all honesty, with the apartment being so small – and flicked on the light. And then he grinned as he saw the message written on the mirror in lipstick.

 _See you later Mister Wolf xx_

As he dressed, Wolf told himself that a good friend would definitely go and visit Miller again today, see how his mate was getting on. And if he happened to run into Doctor Riley while he was there, well then that would just be a happy coincidence.

As there was no mission on the horizon and he didn't have to report in, he chose jeans and a t-shirt rather than his uniform. The fact that he made sure the jeans were clean and the t-shirt flattering was just a matter of pride, he decided, absolutely nothing to do with the faint possibility that he might run into Riley. Then he glanced at himself in the mirror, the one that still had Riley's note written on it, and shook his head with a grin. _Who are you kidding?_

As he entered the hospital lobby an hour later, he was already keeping an eye out for her, and while he stood in the elevator on his way to the twelfth floor, he couldn't help picturing that interrupted kiss. Riley was nowhere to be seen as he walked down the corridor to Miller's room, and he had to remind himself that this should be the real purpose of his visit before he pushed open the door.

"Hey, Miller. How you feeling today?"

"Wolf Man!" Miller's face split into a grin. "You didn't have to come see me again."

"Ah, I was just passing." He said nonchalantly. "Doctor been in to see you yet?"

"I have not seen the beautiful Doctor Riley this morning, no." Miller looked up at the clock over the door, "But she and her perfect legs are due any time now."

Wolf supressed a smile, remembering the difference between Miller's overblown statements about the doctor, and his tongue-tied reactions to her.

"Did she find you last night?" Miller asked, "She said that shot for your shoulder injury really couldn't wait. I didn't realise you still-"

It wasn't the first time Wolf had been grateful for his ability to react quickly, and he managed a casual interruption. "Yeah, she came knocking at my door alright, though it's a fuss about nothing. You know doctors. Do you give out my address to everybody who asks, by the way?"

Miller reddened slightly. "No, I just thought, where she said-"

"It's fine, mate." Wolf reassured him, feeling a little bad. "I was just kidding." But before he could change the subject, he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"Good morning, gentlemen." Riley approached the bed with a smile and a very quick sidelong glance at Wolf. "How are you feeling this morning, Eric?"

"Good, really good." Miller said quickly as Riley checked his chart.

"Well, that's good to hear. I think tomorrow we'll get you walking around a little, what do you say? Want to show me your fancy footwork on that new ankle?"

Miller's face was beet red again as he managed some kind of response, but Wolf hardly heard it because his eyes had settled on the curve of Riley's ass as she bent slightly to examine Miller's leg, and he couldn't look away for remembering exactly what that ass looked like with no clothing covering it.

"Mister Wolf." Her voice pulled him out of his reverie and he found she was looking at him now. "You look a little tired."

"Didn't get much sleep last night." He replied, his gaze locking with hers as she smirked a little.

"Sorry to hear that. I'm on a double shift so I won't be sleeping much myself for the next thirty six hours." She raised her eyebrows slightly. "Sometimes I can only survive by taking a little cat nap in the on call room after rounds." She glanced at her watch. "Figure I might get a whole fifteen minutes right about now if I'm lucky."

"Sounds sensible." He replied, fighting with all his might to keep a straight face. "I, ah, have to get going myself. Busy day."

"Well then I guess I'll see you later." She turned back to Miller. "And you just keep that ankle on ice for me, and I'll come back and check on you this afternoon."

Wolf struggled to keep from watching her as she left the room, but Miller showed no such restraint, and Wolf had to ask himself why Miller watching her ass bugged him so much, when he'd just been doing the very same thing himself. _Because it's my ass to watch_ , was the irrational answer he came up with.

"Busy day?" Miller asked, when Riley was out of sight.

"Huh?"

"You said you had a busy day?" There was something in Miller's expression that put Wolf on his guard.

"Oh, yeah. Got to go see the CNO about a few things." He invented quickly.

"Better change first then, right?" Miller was frowning just a little and Wolf cursed his own stupidity.

"Yeah, yeah. Had to run a couple of errands before- Well, anyway, I really should head out…"

"Okay." Miller still looked somewhat confused, and Wolf thanked the universe for the brain-dulling effects of pain medication on his friend, because otherwise Miller would have almost certainly worked it out by now. As it was, he just said, "Guess I'll see you later, Wolf Man."

"Yeah, mate, see you later. I'll come see you tomorrow." He promised, and then hot footed it out of the room.

Riley was waiting in the corridor, her face splitting into a grin as she saw him. "Wasn't expecting to see you again so soon."

"Thought you needed a nap?" He countered.

"Oh, I do." She unashamedly ran her eyes over him. "I really, really do."

Three minutes later, she locked the door of the on call room behind them and stepped straight into his arms as their mouths met in a fiery kiss. Wolf cupped her face in his hands and pushed her back against the door with his body, eliciting a moan from her as her curves yielded to the hard muscle of his chest.

"We don't have long," She managed to gasp out between kisses, but he was already lifting her, his hands grasping that very fine ass, her skirt riding up as she wrapped her legs around his waist. For a second he considered the mechanics of the room's bunk beds, but dismissed that thought almost immediately.

"Like this?" He asked instead, and she nodded, already reaching for his fly as he pushed her skirt higher, securing her as firmly as he could between his body and the door. He slid a hand under her, pushing aside her underwear and feeling her wetness coating his fingers as he stroked her. Her hand wrapped around his hard length, and he tried not to groan as she positioned him perfectly, allowing him to thrust up into her slippery heat as she stifled a gasp against his mouth.

It wasn't the easiest position to manoeuvre in, but with Riley moving with him, her legs tight around his waist, and his hand tight on her hip, his thumb just managing to graze across her clit, it still wasn't long before they were both panting for breath, her head tipping back as she approached the edge.

"Wolf!" She half whispered, half shouted, as she tensed, jerked, and then sagged slightly in his arms, and he pressed his face into her shoulder to stifle his own shout as he let go with relief.

She was laughing just a little as he helped her back to the floor, and he realised he was grinning himself.

"That was quite a cat nap." She straightened her skirt and then gave him a different kind of smile, the softer one that he'd glimpsed last night, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.

"I could use an actual nap." He admitted, "You wore me out with your demands."

"Oh yeah?" She giggled. "Good for me."

"Listen, I know you're on shift tonight, but tomorrow? Or the weekend? You want to go out and get that drink?"

She tipped her head back to look up at him. "Friday night. St Patrick's Day. There's this party-"

"-at Tex Nolan's place." He finished for her, but she looked slightly confused.

"Nina Callaghan's party, that's the one I'm going to."

"They're married." He told her, frowning, "Don't you-" Then he remembered that Nina never called her husband Tex. "Kansas. She calls him Kansas. He and I used to work together."

Her frown cleared and she smiled. "Well then I guess we're going to be in the same place at the same time anyway?"

"I can give you a ride?"

She smirked. "Another one? Well, if you insist…"


	5. Tree

_Author's note: So although this story focuses on Wolf and Riley, more widely it is set in my 'Step' universe, which in brief terms means all of our favourite TLS characters are still alive, and getting on with life after the apocalypse. If you want a bit more background, there's a summary in my bio._

 _This chapter also links in to my story 'Kiss Me, I'm Irish', so you can see the party from Tom and Sasha's point of view there, if you like._

 _Thank you, as always, for reading, and especially reviewing!_

 **Chapter 5 – Tree**

"Nice truck."

Wolf had been leaning against the door of his pick up as he waited for Riley to emerge from her building, enjoying the last of the daylight and the hint of a breeze rustling the trees on the sidewalk, but as he heard her voice he stood up straight and drank in the sight in front of him.

He'd only ever seen her in professional clothes before – or naked, of course – and if you'd asked him to guess how she dressed in her off hours, he would have assumed more of the same. But he would have been very, very wrong.

Blonde hair tumbled around her face in loose waves, her green dress was more like a slightly elongated tank top than anything else, as it didn't cover much more than her ass, and she'd accessorised with a leather jacket and ankle boots that made her look like nothing so much as the classiest biker chick he'd ever seen. She grinned at him and he managed to grin back.

"Doctor Riley." His voice was heavy with appreciation, and her smile turned a little wicked.

"Mister Wolf." She acknowledged, then nodded towards the truck. "Seriously, any one of my brothers would have killed for one of those."

"Seriously," He said, unable to rip his eyes away from her, "You look… Christ, Riley."

She laughed. "You were expecting a nice little cocktail dress to the knee, am I right?"

"Something like that." He agreed.

"Well, you don't look half bad yourself." She stepped in close and ran her hand inside his jacket. "Nice shirt."

For a second he thought seriously about skipping the party and just taking her to his place, but he didn't want to disappoint Tex. Then again, he also didn't know if he was ready for the inevitable gossip to start when he walked in with Riley. To delay the decision, he caught her chin in his hand and planted a kiss on her mouth.

"Mmm." She smiled up at him. "You'd better start driving, or I'm going to get tempted to take you upstairs, and that would be a waste of this outfit."

It was a forty minute drive out of the city to Tex and Nina's place, just a couple of miles down the road from where Admiral Tom Chandler lived with his wife Sasha and their kids. As they drove, Wolf told Riley just a little bit about his time on the Nathan James with Tom and Tex, trying to focus on the lighter moments - the few that there had been - and the trip to St Louis to spread Doctor Scott's contagious cure.

"I know Rachel a little," Riley commented. "We've met around the hospital a few times. I like her."

"So do I." Wolf agreed. "Since she saved the world and everything." He grinned and Riley slapped his knee lightly. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it, then released it and rested his hand on her thigh instead.

"She's going to be at the party tonight." She said, "She told me she can't handle her drink, so that'll be kind of funny."

Wolf's mouth quirked into a half smile at the thought. "Guess Captain Slattery will be carrying her home then."

They could hear music from Tex's place before they even reached the driveway, and Wolf's earlier thoughts about how his friends and former crewmates would take his new relationship returned with a vengeance. He stopped the truck at the end of the driveway, pulling in to the side of the road, just out of sight of the house.

"Do you want to go in first?" He asked.

"What?" Riley turned to him with a puzzled look.

"I mean, if we walk in there together-" He started, but her mouth had already dropped open.

"You don't want people to know about this?" She asked, and he could see the hurt under the disbelief. "Well, I guess that sets me straight."

"Riley, that's not-"

"No, I get it." She said, her body angling away from him as she wrenched open the door of the truck. "I'll see you in there. If you're not too embarrassed to be seen talking to me in public." And before he could say anything else, she was striding up the driveway, the loud slam of the door still reverberating in his ears.

By the time he'd locked the truck and tried to follow her, she was already inside the house, and as soon as he entered, Wolf realised the odds of finding her, let alone getting to talk to her, were stacked against him; partly because the place was heaving with people, and partly because he knew most of them, and they all wanted to talk to him.

He would have resigned himself to it, but the fact that he'd hurt Riley meant he couldn't relax, even with old friends like Danny and Kara Green. After he'd had to ask Kara to repeat herself three times because he was too distracted to take in what she was saying, she laid a hand on his arm.

"Wolf, what's going on?" She asked, her voice low enough beneath the noise of the party for it to only be heard by him.

"Nothing…" He was still scanning the room for Riley, he couldn't help it.

"Wolf, look at me." Kara was half laughing and half exasperated. "Has this got something to do with Miller's doctor?"

"What?!" His surprise allowed him to finally focus on Kara.

"Miller said he thought there was something going on between you and his 'hot doctor'." Kara made a face as she used Miller's term for Riley. "And judging by the look on your face, he's not wrong."

"Shit." Wolf muttered. And then he looked at Kara's half amused, half sympathetic face, and decided this really couldn't get any worse. "Yeah. There's something going on. But I just fucked it up."

"What did you do?"

"I might have made her think I didn't want people to see us together."

He could see Kara was trying not to laugh as she said, "How did you manage that?" Then her mouth dropped open a little. "Oh god, please tell me you didn't suggest you walked in separately? Because that was fine for Danny and I, back in the days when we were having a strictly forbidden relationship on the ship, but why on earth would you do that to a woman you're dating?"

"Gossip?" He replied weakly, but Kara was already shaking her head.

"For crying out loud. Men!" She sighed. "You want my advice? Go find her, apologise, and then apologise again. Assuming you like her, that is?"

"I like her." He admitted.

"Well then, maybe tell her that too!"

Since he'd already established that Riley wasn't in the living room, Wolf pushed his way through to the kitchen, and spotted Riley talking to Rachel in a corner, both of them swigging a violently green concoction from matching cocktail glasses. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but the way Rachel raised her eyebrow without comment when he approached told him everything he needed to know.

"Doc." He greeted her, and her eyebrow just climbed higher.

"Wolf." She acknowledged.

He took a breath and turned to Riley. "Can I talk to you?"

"I don't know." She said coldly. "People might see."

He cringed with embarrassment, all too aware of Rachel hearing every word. "Riley, please."

She sighed. "Fine." She put her glass on the counter and turned to Rachel. "I'm sorry, I'll see you later?"

"Of course." Rachel swigged back the rest of her own drink. "I need another one of these, anyway."

Riley pushed past Wolf and headed back into the living room, and he followed close behind her as she wove through the crowd and out of the front door. She didn't turn to check he was with her, just strode out onto the lawn.

"Riley." He didn't want to grab at her, but he needed her to look at him. "Hope," He tried. "Please."

"You said that already." She said tightly, but she stopped and turned to face him, her face dappled by the shadow of the large tree that dominated the front yard. "What else do you have to say?"

 _You're beautiful when you're angry_ , he thought. "I'm sorry." He tried instead. "I was trying to protect you from gossip-"

"Protect me? Or yourself?"

"Both." He said honestly, "I don't want everyone talking about us, not yet. I just-" He stopped himself, but her face had softened a fraction.

"You just what?" She asked.

"I just want to see where this goes first." He admitted. "If you want to get technical, this is our first date."

Her mouth moved a little, as though she was stifling a smile. "I guess."

"I'm not embarrassed." He said firmly. "Not at all."

"Okay." This time the smile broke through just a little.

"I like you." He said, because it felt like he might finally be on the right track.

"Okay." She said again, and the smile widened.

"I'm going to kiss you now."

"Oh really? You going to start telegraphing your moves, huh?" That teasing tone was back, and he was surprised how relieved he was to hear it.

"Only when completely necessary." He replied, and pulled her into his arms.

"Well alright then." She conceded, and he kissed her.

There was something about making out with a girl under a tree that made him think of his teenage years, and Wolf couldn't help smiling slightly against her mouth. And then he felt her hand grab his bum, and it brought him right back to the present, shifting a little so they could lean against the broad trunk of the tree as the kiss deepened.

"You want to get out of here?" He asked when they paused for breath, and she shook her head.

"Not really." Her smile was teasing. "I want to stay right here."

"Oh yeah?" He grinned as he realised what she might be implying. "Right here?" He checked.

"Mmm hmm." She kissed him again, her hand creeping under the back of his shirt.

He pressed her a little harder into the tree trunk, his lips finding her jaw, then her neck, then the sensitive space behind her ear as she shivered.

"Hope…" He murmured, and she shivered again. He pulled the neckline of her dress down just a little, planting a soft kiss on the top of her breast, then after a very quick check that they were completely hidden from the house by the breadth of the tree, he gave in to temptation and dropped to his knees, hearing her gasp and giggle.

"Mister Wolf!" But it was only mock disapproval, and as he slid his palms up the insides of those sky high legs, she parted them eagerly. He dropped a kiss on the inside of her knee, then her inner thigh, and then he pushed the hem of her dress up and kissed the front of her panties, touching with his tongue where the fabric was already wet with her desire.

She made a low sound of pleasure, and he pulled her underwear to the side, sinking his tongue between her folds, lapping at her clit. He felt her fingers slide into his hair, and shifted his hand from her thigh, pushing his thumb inside her, stroking gently as he feathered his tongue over her clit. Her breathing was becoming harsher, and he could feel her legs starting to tremble. Closing his lips, he sucked lightly, and the flood of her sweetness into his mouth and the moan she gave as her hand tightened on his hair signalled her release.

Lightly kissing her inner thigh, he carefully pulled her underwear back into place and rose to his feet, cupping her face in his hands. Her eyes were half closed, her lips curved in a satisfied smile.

"Okay?" He asked, and she wrapped her arms around him and leaned into his chest in response. He held her close, relishing the feeling of her soft and sated in his arms, even as he acknowledged how much he wanted more.

"Will you take me home?" She murmured, and he felt a pang of disappointment until she added, "Your home?"


	6. Apartment

_Author's note: This is nothing but a smutty little interlude while I work on the next few chapters!_

 _Happy weekend, hope you enjoy, and please review if you do!_

 **Chapter 6 - Apartment**

After staring at the pile of her clothes on the floor for less than ten seconds, Riley dropped back onto the mattress beside him, and groaned.

"This is crazy."

Wolf turned his head to look at her, but her breast was right in his eye line, and his hand rose almost involuntarily to cup it, stroking her soft skin.

"God..." He groaned, rolling onto his side so he could take her nipple in his mouth, biting gently until she whimpered.

"Wolf, seriously..." But even as she spoke, she was arching into his touch.

"I know," He agreed, slipping his hand between her thighs, "I know..."

It was Saturday evening, they'd been in his bed for almost twenty four hours, and the trouble was, every time either of them tried to get up, let alone get dressed or leave the apartment, they couldn't do it. It was as though Riley's soft, bare skin had cast a spell on him, and she seemed to be suffering a similar affliction.

"I can't," She moaned now, as he circled his thumb on her clit, "But I still want to..."

"You're right," He said, as he moved over her, "This is crazy."

She squeezed her eyes shut suddenly, half gasping, half laughing, "Not the arms!" Her hand came up to grasp his upper arm where he was supporting his weight above her. "Don't show me the arms, I can't take it."

He chuckled slightly, even as he pressed his torso against hers, savouring the softness of her breasts. "Open your eyes..." He looked down at her flushed face, dipping his head to kiss the freckles dusting her cheekbones.

Her eyes flickered open just as she wrapped her legs around him, opening so suddenly that he groaned at the feel of heat and wetness, and the sensation of being painfully hard yet again.

"Are you sure?" He asked, worried he might be hurting her, even as he was desperate for her.

"Yes, want to..." Riley lifted her hips up to push against him, and he eased slowly into her as she groaned with satisfaction.

Conscious that they were both exhausted and a little sore, he limited himself to a gentle rocking against her, but it was enough. The feel of her so soft and hot inside, the little sounds she was making, and the way her eyes fixed helplessly on his, it all combined to bring him to the edge much faster than a man who'd had this much sex in this short a time should be able to manage.

"God, Riley!" He gasped, and she moaned in response, tightening around him.

Shifting back onto his knees so he could drink in the full sight of her spread out beneath him, he found her clit again with his thumb, barely moving inside her as he fought his desire to thrust hard and let go.

"Yes..." She gasped, her eyes finding his again, and his groan was as much of relief as pleasure as he felt her climax and surrendered to his own.

He collapsed onto his back beside her, and smiled as she immediately curled into his side. He wrapped his arm around her and lifted his head just enough to kiss her hair.

"I really do have to get to the hospital." She murmured.

"I know." He acknowledged, "I'll drive you." But neither of them moved.

"Maybe we should take a nap first." She suggested, "Won't be much use to my patients if I'm exhausted."

"Good idea." He agreed, pulling her a little tighter against him.

"And then a shower." She added.

Wolf couldn't suppress a groan at the image that popped into his head - Riley, naked and glistening, soapy water sliding down those perfect legs... And before he knew it, his mouth was on hers, and his hand was heading south once more.


	7. Bar

_Author's note: So I've got a bit of direction for moving this along, but happy to hear any suggestions you might have – especially for other small spaces these two might misbehave in! Leave me a review or send me a message…_

 **Chapter 7 - Bar**

"I can hardly walk!" Riley hissed as they strolled down the hospital corridor together, and Wolf tried to suppress his smirk, until he glanced sideways and saw she was smirking herself.

"People are going to take one look," She continued, "And know exactly what we've been doing."

"After the party, they probably all know anyway." He pointed out.

She stopped dead and looked at him in shock. "You said nobody saw!"

"No, no, not the tree," He placed his hands on her upper arms to steady her. "But we left together, you talked to Rachel about me… And of course Miller said something to Kara."

Riley's mouth curved back into a smile. "You're looking forward to this conversation then, huh?"

"Not much. But I figure if you're there, there won't be too many inappropriate questions."

"Maybe I should leave you to it, then." She teased, and he couldn't resist grabbing a quick kiss before she stepped back. "I'm at work!" She reminded him, but she was still smiling.

When they reached Miller's room, Wolf had to take a deep breath before he pushed the door open and entered just ahead of Riley.

"Hey, Miller."

"Wolf Man!" As always, Miller's face lit up, and Wolf felt a pang of something kind of like guilt.

"How you doing?"

But before Miller could answer, Riley had stepped into the room, and without really thinking about it, Wolf caught her hand and curled his fingers around hers. Then he cursed himself as he watched Miller take that in.

"Hi Eric." Riley said softly, and Wolf realised with surprise that she sounded almost nervous. "How are you feeling today?"

But Miller was still staring at their joined hands. "I was right then," he said slowly. "I knew something was going on." And then to Wolf's relief, he grinned. "Can't get these things past me, Wolf Man!"

Riley's fingers gripped his more tightly, and Wolf squeezed back.

"It's all down to you, mate." He told his friend, "Never thought I'd be dating a doctor."

Miller turned to Riley, "I still think you should have picked me, Doc."

Riley laughed, "I think I'm a little too old for you, Eric." She paused, "Nurse Spencer likes redheaded men, though. You know Nurse Spencer? Pretty, big brown eyes?"

Wolf grinned to himself as he watched Miller's eyes light up.

Once Riley had checked his chart and examined his ankle, confirming rehabilitation plans, she left to continue her rounds, squeezing Wolf's shoulder as she did so. Alone with Miller, he turned to his friend and shrugged.

"Sorry I didn't tell you earlier, mate."

"I'm sorry I stared at your girlfriend's ass so much." Miller replied, and Wolf couldn't help but laugh.

As he left the hospital though, he found himself thinking about what Miller had said. Was Riley his girlfriend? Technically, they hadn't even managed a real date at this point. But at the same time, he absolutely knew that there was more to it than all the sex. For a moment, Wolf found himself violently missing his sister; she was the one he used to call about this stuff, the one he laughingly referred to as his guru. She would have been able to tell him exactly what to do. He pushed the thought away along with the tears prickling his eyes, and took a breath. _Work it out for yourself_. He took out his phone and sent Riley a message, then headed to the place he always did his best thinking.

She didn't reply until a couple of hours later, by which point he was at the gym kicking the hell out of a bag. The amount of time he'd spent in bed with Riley lately had played havoc with his training regime, and it had taken longer than usual to get into the groove of his workout. So it was only when he'd finally exhausted his muscles that he slumped onto a bench and noticed the message on his phone.

 _If that's some kind of bet, I'm in. Pick me up at 8. x_

He could tell from her posture that Riley was tired as she left the hospital and walked towards his truck, but she still mustered a grin for him, and she'd changed into skinny jeans and a low cut silky t-shirt that immediately made him doubt his earlier suggestion.

"Date with no sleepover, huh?" She said as she climbed into the passenger seat, "I'm intrigued, Mister Wolf."

"I'm already regretting it." He acknowledged, trying not to stare at the wide V of smooth skin and hint of cleavage revealed by her top.

She shot him another grin, and he couldn't resist leaning in for a kiss, tasting coffee and toothpaste, and the underlying sweetness which he knew by now was just her.

"Come on," She said as their lips parted, "You promised me a date." Her smile was soft now, and he felt a twinge that was definitely in his chest rather than his groin.

He drove them to his favourite bar, which had famously been the first to reopen in St Louis following the virus. Of course there were plenty more these days, but Flynns still always felt a little special to him.

"I've heard of this place, but I've never been before." Riley was still looking around curiously as he placed their drinks on the table, "Wrong side of town for me. Full of service personnel." She made a face and he laughed as he sat down.

"Tex introduced me to it when I got back from Asia. Might have spent a little too much time here for a while."

"Oh, I did my post apocalypse drinking spell back in Tennessee. End of that kind of coincided with coming to St Louis." She shrugged, "Since then it's mainly been two fingers of whiskey of an evening with just my annoying roommate and a stack of old country records for company." She was still smiling, but there was something under the smile that caught at his chest again.

"I've been spending a lot of time in the gym." He offered. "Once reality finally kicked in, most of my mates focused on family. You know, the ones who are still alive." He'd meant it as a joke, but it didn't quite come out that way.

"You didn't have a girl, before all this?" She asked, and he shrugged.

"Had a few girlfriends over the years, back in Oz. Never easy with my job." He paused for a second, but then let himself say it, "I was even married once, for about ten minutes. But before the virus, no, there was no one for a while. Blessing in disguise, I guess." He suddenly realised he didn't know what position she'd been in before the apocalypse. "What about you? Were you-"

"Married? No." She answered before he could finish. "To my job, maybe. Most of the men I knew didn't like coming in second to an operating room." The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, "You talk about blessings in disguise, well maybe the virus woke me up to a few things, like being a surgeon not actually being akin to god." She looked up at him and her smile widened to that teasing one that he already knew meant trouble. "So you were married once, huh? What'd you do to screw that up?"

He laughed, "Why do you assume it was my fault?"

"Tell me I'm wrong." She challenged, and he relented, laughing.

"Okay, I shouldn't have done it in the first place, I got blinded by a pretty face, and I was about to go on a long deployment. The so called marriage didn't survive it."

"How old were you?"

"Twenty three." He shrugged. "Young and stupid."

"How old are you now?" She asked, narrowing her eyes a little.

"Forty." He admitted, "Old and marginally less stupid."

"Well, old man, we've all done stupid things." She shrugged. "I mean, I once kissed a complete stranger in an elevator, just because I liked his eyes."

"Oh yeah?" He countered, starting to smile, "I once hooked up with a girl - a doctor actually - in a hospital on call room. I mean, she was irresistible, but-"

Riley silenced him with a sudden kiss, her arms winding around his neck as he pulled her as close as their chairs would allow.

"Sorry," She said, breaking away but not looking sorry at all, "Couldn't help myself."

"No apology required." He drained his beer. "Want another drink?"

"I want," She lingered on the word, "You to take me back to your place and fuck me stupid again, but since that's not on the menu, I guess another drink would be nice."

He swallowed hard, holding her gaze, heat rising between them to the point where he genuinely started to wonder how she'd feel about sex in the restroom, but then somehow they both managed to let it go.

"Drink." He said as firmly as he could manage, and as he rose from the table, he just hoped he could hold out for the rest of the evening.

In the event, it wasn't quite as much of a challenge as he'd feared. Not because he didn't desperately want to take Riley home and get her naked, but because he enjoyed talking to her enough to want to keep doing that instead. Inevitably, however, there finally came a point when they'd drunk enough and talked enough, which just so happened to coincide with the bar owner flatly telling them that he wanted to close up so would they kindly take the hint and leave, and suddenly they were out on the pavement in the cool night air.

Riley took out her cell phone. "Will you wait with me while I call a cab?"

He felt a strong sense of disappointment, even as he nodded. "Of course."

She dialled and he wondered if she was calling his bluff, but it seemed she really was ordering a cab. "Be here in five." She said, "Guess there's not much call for cabs at 1am these days." She wrapped her arms around herself and bounced on the spot a little, and he realised she was cold.

"Shit, come here." He stepped close and rubbed his hands over her bare arms, warming her. "You're really going home?" He asked, the words slipping out of his mouth before he could stop them.

She looked up at him, something vulnerable in her expression. "I am. It's not that I don't want to go home with you, I do, but you were right. We should at least try to date a little as well." She took a deep breath. "I like you, Mister Wolf. I don't want to be just some girl you screw for a while."

He had to swallow hard before he could answer, instinctively moving his hands to her back, drawing her closer, "I like you, Hope. A lot. You're not ever going to be just some girl to me."

Before she could reply, her cab pulled up beside them.

"I'll call you tomorrow." He said, bending his head to kiss her slowly, feeling her hands squeeze his waist and allowing himself just one pang of regret for this decision.

"Tomorrow." She agreed, and smiled. "Goodnight, Mister Wolf."

He held the cab door open for her, and she settled into the seat, looking up and blowing him a kiss as he carefully closed it. Then as the cab drove away, he felt that twinge in his chest again, the one that told him Riley had already taken hold of his heart.


	8. Couch

_Author's note: It's all fun and games until feelings show up to the party…_

 _Thank you, as always, for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting._

 **Chapter 8 - Couch**

Wolf turned over in bed, banging his fist into the pillow. There was no reason he shouldn't be able to sleep - quite the opposite, after all the shuteye he'd missed out on lately while he'd been with Riley. He found himself wondering if that was the problem – somehow he'd gotten used to her being here, filling his bed with the scent of her hair, the warmth of her skin, and the sound of her laughter as much as her moans of pleasure.

A muted buzz sounded from the nightstand, and he turned his head to check the clock as he reached for his phone. 3am, which meant it was most likely someone on the other side of the world. But when he checked, he saw a message from Riley.

 _I should have come home with you._

He grinned and tapped out a reply.

 _Can't sleep?_

 _Too quiet._

It wasn't quite the response he'd expected, but then he remembered what she'd said the first time they'd met, in the elevator, about not liking to be alone, and immediately messaged back.

 _Want me to come over?_

He waited, but no answer appeared. His thumb hovered over the call button as he realised he was worried about her, but then she replied.

 _I'm okay. Sorry for waking you._

He pushed the call button, not believing her for a second.

"I'm okay." She said, answering immediately, "I was being stupid and selfish." She gave a short laugh. "Not much of a booty call, huh? I mean it, Mister Wolf, go back to sleep."

"Where's your roommate?" He asked.

"Gone away for a few days. But it's fine, really."

"I can come over, babe, it's not a problem." He assured her.

She laughed a little, and the sound was warmer, more relaxed. "Thank you. But I'm okay now, I promise."

"Sure?" He double checked.

"Absolutely. Though now I kind of want you here so you can call me babe again."

He hadn't even noticed that he'd said it, but he smiled. "Oh yeah?"

"Mmm." He could hear her smile. "But we had a deal, so you should just say goodnight."

"Night, babe."

She giggled, "Night." And then she hung up.

Wolf put the phone back on the nightstand and punched the pillow into yet another shape, but then he found that by concentrating on the memory of Riley's teasing little laugh, he was able to get to sleep, even with the hint of worry that still nagged at him.

He woke at 8am, with a slightly fuzzy head and an irresistible craving to see her. After a lightning fast shower and shave, he stopped off at a bakery to pick up breakfast, then drove straight to her place.

"Mister Wolf!" Riley was wearing a cotton robe, her blonde hair in a messy knot on top of her head, and although she looked beautiful, she also looked tired.

"Did you sleep?" He asked, and she made a face.

"Not so much." She opened the door wide to invite him in, and he found himself stepping straight into a mid-sized living room, opening out into a kitchen area under the two large windows.

"This place is a mess," She warned, but as he closed the door behind him and turned to look at her, she stepped forward and kissed him. "I'm happy to see you, though."

"I brought breakfast." He held up the bag of pastries, and wrapped his other arm around her.

"Yes you did." She kissed him again, taking the bag out of his hand as she did so, setting it down on a side table. "But this is all I want for breakfast right now."

She locked her arms around his neck and kissed him once more, longer and slower, and he felt himself immediately responding, his concern for her temporarily retreating in favour of desire. He could feel every curve through the thin cotton of her robe, and as he ran his hand down her back and over her ass, he established that she wasn't wearing a stitch underneath.

"I wasn't expecting company." She murmured in explanation, and he grinned.

"I'm not complaining." He shifted back a little, taking his hands to the belt of her robe and carefully untying it, then pulling it open slowly.

She bit her lip and smiled slightly as he ran his eyes hungrily over those long legs, the curve of her waist, her delicious breasts; acres of soft, creamy, freckled skin.

"Your turn." She said softly, slipping the robe from her shoulders, and he obligingly knelt to remove his boots, yanked his shirt over his head and dropped his jeans, without ever taking his eyes from her body. Then he remembered what she'd said on the phone last night.

"Come here, babe." He tried, and saw her pupils dilate as she obeyed, stepping right in close and pressing her breasts into his chest.

He captured her lips in a hungry kiss, lifting her into his arms and staggering the few steps to an overstuffed yellow couch, dropping to a seat with Riley in his lap. He turned his attention immediately to her breasts, kissing and sucking as she laced her fingers through his hair and moaned softly.

He felt her shift so that she was straddling him fully, and then her hand was wrapping around his hardness and guiding him home, and before he knew it he was sheathed inside her, groaning at the sensation even as he found her mouth with his.

She moved on him slowly, and Wolf was more than happy to let her set the pace, his hands stroking her skin, as he took advantage of her hair being up and traced kisses along her jaw, across her neck, nipping the soft skin of her shoulder as she shivered slightly. Her hands were on his shoulders as she started to move a little faster, and he lifted his hips to push deeper.

"You feel incredible..." He murmured, and she made a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a moan as she slid down hard on him again.

"You don't...feel so bad...yourself..." She panted out, and he kissed her as their movements became faster, feeling her squeezing him tighter, and he managed to get a hand to her hip, reaching between them until he could find her clit, and in a couple of strokes of his thumb, she pushed down hard on him, stilled and cried out, arching back, and the sight of her like that was enough to tip him over the edge, holding her hips tight as he spilled himself inside her.

He wrapped his arms around her as she slumped into him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder, her face buried in his neck.

"Babe?" He stroked her back gently, "You alright?" She nodded, and snuggled into him a little more, and he tightened his arms around her. "Hope?" He tried again, because for all that the sex had been pretty fucking great, he felt the same unease he had when she'd messaged in the night, that instinct that something wasn't right.

She raised her head and gave him a smile, but it was a little tense. "It's all good, Mister Wolf." She lifted herself off of him, but as she made to leave the couch, he tugged her back, pulling her down beside him and wrapping his arms around her again.

"What's wrong?" He asked more firmly, looking into her face. "What happened at 3am?"

She sighed. "Just bad dreams. It's stupid. I'm fine."

"I didn't come over for sex." He told her honestly, "I just wanted to see you. I wanted-" He hesitated, then spoke what he suddenly realised was the truth, "I wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I know." She almost whispered. "When I messaged you last night, I'd woken up scared and alone and you were the first person-" She broke off. "This is moving really fast, Wolf."

He nodded, trying to put his thoughts into words. "Hope, I'm not saying I know how to do this, so maybe we're doing it wrong, but it doesn't feel that way. It's good, being with you."

She nodded. "I like it when you're around."

"Then let me be around, and we'll just…" He didn't really have an ending for that sentence, but since she leaned in and kissed him, it seemed he didn't need one.

"Okay." She said softly. "Okay."

"What do you want to do now?" He asked.

She looked up at him, her smile holding just a hint of her teasing side. "How about we eat those breakfast pastries, then get back into bed and see what happens next?"


	9. Gym

_Author's note: I'm not the only one who re-watches and freeze frames that scene of Wolf working out, right? Right?_

 _Not sure quite where this story is going as yet, but it's going somewhere. And there was me saying I wasn't going to write any more multi-chapter TLS fics…_

 _Thank you for reading, please review if you enjoy._

 **Chapter 9 - Gym**

"So you're going to the gym this morning, right?"

Hope was snuggled in his arms in bed, and Wolf was sleepily stroking her back as she talked. Between her shifts at the hospital and a couple of assignments he'd agreed to carry out for Tom Chandler, they'd still managed to spend plenty of time together in the past couple of weeks, even if it was sometimes between the end of her late shift and the start of his day, like today, when she'd let herself into his apartment at 4am and crawled straight into bed beside him.

"Mmm hmm." He forced his eyes open. "Why?"

"Thought I might come with you, let you show me a few moves?"

He yawned and kissed her hair. "I thought you wanted to sleep in?"

She kissed his chest and snuggled in closer. "I do, but I also want to see you get all hot and sweaty."

He couldn't help but laugh. "You've seen me like that plenty of times."

"But never enough." He felt her grin against his chest. "And not in public."

"You can see it right now if you like?" He offered, and she giggled as she raised her head for a kiss.

"Thought you'd never ask..."

As he rifled through his drawers for clean workout gear a few hours later, Wolf was still assuming that Hope's remark about the gym had been a joke. That was, until he turned around to see her pulling workout clothes of her own from her overnight bag.

"You're really coming to the gym?"

"I really am." She shot him a grin, "Unless you're worried you can't keep up with me!"

"Babe, do you know what I do at the gym?" He asked, realising he hadn't really talked about his training.

"Jazzercise?" She queried, smirking, and he shrugged. _More fun to show her, anyway._

In any case, his more pressing concern quickly became how he was going to chaperone his girlfriend in the gym, given her choice of outfit. Sure, those tiny shorts were technically running shorts, and her tank top was courtesy of a sports brand, but they showcased her figure almost indecently well.

"You might want to wear... more." He tried, but she shrugged.

"I'm good."

He couldn't quite work out if this was one of her teasing games or not, but he figured the only option was to play it straight and see what happened.

The gym was a reclaimed warehouse on the edge of the military district, so although it was technically a public resource, ninety percent of those who worked out there were in the service. Its equipment was whatever had been salvaged from gyms, private homes, and other sources in the area, which meant a line of treadmills and stationery bikes of varying ages, a large but random collection of free weights, and two long, beautiful lines of hanging punch bags, which were the focus for most of its clientele. At the far end, an area had been marked out for sparring, but few were willing to risk that on a concrete floor with little or no protective gear.

Wolf watched Hope take in the place as they stood in the doorway together, unable to read her expression. There were only a handful of people in the large space at this hour, all of them male, and there was a distinct aroma of sweat which he could have sworn he'd never noticed until this moment.

"Well, I guess there's no spa attached." She said, and he swallowed.

"I know it's a little-" He started, but then one of the men who'd stopped working out to stare at Hope decided to take it a step further and let out a piercing wolf whistle.

"Hey baby! You here to drop and give me sixty nine?"

Before Wolf could react, a familiar figure stepped out from behind a hanging bag a few feet away and gave the perpetrator a hard stare.

"Apologise to the lady." Danny Green said stonily.

"Or you'll be apologising to us." Carlton Burk added, stepping up from the other side as Wolf himself took a threatening step forward.

"Oh come on now, boys!" Hope's voice was completely steady and to Wolf's astonishment she seemed unfazed as she looked around at the four men. "It's just a little playing, right? I mean, we all know he ain't putting his oorah in any hooha, with a face like that." Her teasing grin had a hard edge to it that Wolf hadn't seen before, and the guy who'd catcalled her had turned brick red. Eyes on the floor, he hurried off towards the locker room.

Carlton whistled in appreciation. "Looks like you can handle it yourself, ma'am."

Danny was looking at Wolf through narrowed eyes, no doubt recalling whatever Kara had told him about Hope. "Doctor Riley?" He asked, holding out his hand, and Hope shook it.

"Just Riley is fine."

"Danny Green. Wolf and I worked together on the Nathan James."

"We all did." Carlton offered his hand, "Carlton Burk. How did you know your admirer there was a Marine?"

Hope shrugged. "Tattoos were a giveaway." Then she glanced at Wolf before adding, "My daddy and my brothers were all in the Corps."

"So you've heard all the lines, huh?" Danny asked with a smile.

"Every single one of them." She grinned back.

Carlton turned to Wolf, "Now I get why you weren't afraid to bring her here."

Wolf nodded, still processing the new information about Hope's family. "My girl can handle herself." He acknowledged, and he caught a glimpse of her smile out of the corner of his eye.

"Anyway, we were just finishing up." Danny said, shooting a glance at Carlton, who quickly agreed.

"Yeah, we'll leave you to it. Good to meet you, Riley."

"Likewise." She waited until they were out of earshot before turning to Wolf. "You ready to put me through my paces?"

He had about a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but he figured this probably wasn't the time or the place, so instead he grinned at her. "Show me what you got, babe."

As it turned out, what she had was pretty impressive. He supported the bag as she launched an assault of kicks and punches, most of them landing bang on target with surprising force.

"Trained by four brothers, eh?" Wolf asked as she paused to roll her shoulders.

"You know it." She landed a powerful kick to the bag. "Momma wanted me in little pink dresses and ballet class, but I was always out back fighting with the boys."

"What side did your dad come down on?"

"He died when I was eleven." Punch. "On deployment." Another punch. "Chopper went down." Kick. "Son of a bitch!" Her foot glanced awkwardly off the bag, and almost knocked her off balance.

Wolf felt knocked off balance himself by the revelation. "Me too." He managed.

She paused, shaking out her hands. "You too, what?"

"My dad. Died in combat. Navy."

She tipped her head to one side, looking at him curiously. "Well I didn't figure that." She rotated her wrists once more before landing another punch to the bag. "I guessed you were rebelling against a hippy upbringing or something. I mean, your name is Wolf!"

Jolted as he was, he couldn't help but laugh as he braced the bag against three more hard kicks from her before she paused again.

"I haven't done this for a long time, and I'm feeling it." She stepped back. "You want to show me some moves?"

Relieved not to be pressed on the question of his family, he did as he was asked and started in on the bag, soon losing himself as always in the rhythm of it, finding something soothing in the physical challenge. He was dripping with sweat by the time he paused for a breather, and had almost forgotten Hope was there until she offered him a water bottle.

"Well, I'm impressed." She commented, her smile wide. "And I'm not just talking about the way you look in that sweaty shirt."

He managed a laugh as he sucked down water. "You want to take another turn?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to go try out one of those treadmills, you come find me when you're done." She touched his face and answered the unspoken question, "I'm not going to pester you to talk about your family. You tell me when you want."

He reached out and cupped the back of her head with one hand, pulling her in for a kiss, trying not to drip sweat all over her. "Thank you." He murmured as he released her, and she grinned.

"You're welcome, Mister Wolf."


	10. Shower

_Author's note: A little bit of background from Mister Wolf, followed by a little bit of light hearted smut!_

 _Hope you enjoy, please review if you do!_

 **Chapter 10 – Shower**

Wolf wasn't sure what it was about driving that made it easier to talk, but somehow it did. So as he started up the truck and pulled out of the parking lot of the gym, he turned in the opposite direction from his apartment. Hope opened her mouth to speak, but he got there first.

"My mum was the hippy." He saw her mouth close as he continued. "My dad was in the Navy. He saved her from a fight in a pub, that's how they met. She was protesting the war in Vietnam, and some guys took exception. My dad stepped in. She used to tell us that story at bedtime when we were kids."

She reached over and put her hand on his knee, and he kept driving and talking.

"My dad died when I was six. Me and my sister, Rain-" He paused, expecting a laugh or a comment, but she just squeezed his knee, "-we weren't really old enough to understand. He used to be away all the time anyway, so it took a long time to get that he wasn't ever coming back." He swallowed, taking a breath, trying to remember the last time he'd told this story. Not for years, certainly not since the virus. "My mum got remarried later. He was a good bloke, Tony, then they had my brothers, it was a good family. We were all really close, even when I joined the Navy. Rain and I-" He had to pause again, pain shooting through his chest. "She was my best mate."

"What was she like?" Hope asked softly.

He breathed for a few moments, orientating himself, turning left to start heading back towards the centre of the city. "Funny. Smart. She was really good with people. She trained to be a shrink, then dropped out and became a yoga teacher. She took the piss out of herself all the time, like 'My name is Rain, and I teach yooooga'." He found himself saying it in exactly the same silly voice his sister had always used, but to his surprise, for the first time the memory made him laugh instead of wanting to cry. "She was great." He finished quietly.

For a little while they sat in silence, Hope's hand still tight on his knee, but the quiet was soothing rather than awkward.

"You know," She said eventually, "I almost fell off the treadmill twice, I was so busy watching you pound that bag."

He found himself smiling with the change of subject, appreciating her ability to know that he was done with the family history for now. "Oh yeah?"

"Do you have any idea how good your ass looks when you're working out?"

He laughed, letting the tension leave his body. "Probably not as good as yours."

She looked over at him, and he saw a gentle edge to that teasing smile of hers. "Oh, you were checking me out, were you?"

"I might have had a quick look." He conceded, shooting her a grin.

"I am a little worried though," She said, "Because those workouts of yours are hard on the body. I figure maybe I should check you over, being a doctor and all."

"Are you trying to get your hands on my anatomy, Doctor Riley?" He asked, starting to laugh.

"Always, Mister Wolf, always."

Hope walked ahead of him into the apartment, and before he could even close the door, her tank top hit the floor, quickly followed by her shorts, shoes, sports bra and panties.

"Shower." She said, turning to look over her shoulder at him as she crossed the room to the bathroom. "With you," She added, and that gave him the cue to shed his own clothes as he heard her turn the water on.

He stepped into the shower behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, nuzzling his lips into her neck and making her giggle.

"You're gorgeous." He murmured into her ear, and she leaned back against him as he guided them both under the flow of warm water. He reached out for bodywash, filling his hands and stroking it over her shoulders, kneading gently as she let out a little moan of pleasure.

"I thought I was supposed to be examining you?" She asked, but she didn't try to shift position as he progressed to soaping her arms, then her back. It was only when his hands reached her hips that she suddenly turned, reaching up to kiss him as he took hold of her waist.

"I'm not done." He protested, but she was already grabbing her own handful of bodywash, smoothing her hands over his chest, and there was something about the mixture of playfulness and concentration on her face that made him grasp her chin and lift her face so he could kiss her again, pressing close, the soapy lather on his chest transferring to hers, and then her hands were on his bum and he was reciprocating, and the task of washing each other was momentarily forgotten in the heat of the kiss.

"Hey, focus," She said, pulling back a little, smirking. "We have a job to do here."

He laughed and surrendered, but as she shampooed her hair, and then his, he couldn't resist playful strokes of her skin, just as she couldn't resist quick, teasing kisses. It was such an arousing build up that he considered lifting her into his arms and finishing things off right there in the shower, but there was another part of him that wanted more.

So when all of the soap and shampoo bubbles were thoroughly washed away and Hope turned off the water, he wrapped her in a towel before lifting her off her feet, ignoring her yelp of protest, and carrying her through to the main room.

Dropping her gently on the bed, he took the towel for himself and rubbed it quickly over his hair and body, as she smiled up at him, unashamedly naked, and then he was on the bed with her, gathering her up in his arms and kissing her slowly.

"You really did look amazing in that gym." He told her, and she smiled, hooking her leg around his waist to pull his body tight against hers.

"And you definitely didn't disappoint." She answered, and then her smile softened, "In the gym or after."

"I want to tell you things." He acknowledged, stroking her back, "But it's not easy, after everything."

"Me too." She agreed. "No pressure, right?"

"Right." He kissed her again, deeper, and felt her respond, moaning into his mouth. Her skin was so soft under his hands, he felt so close to her, it was almost overwhelming. He made to move down her body, wanting to tease her, taste her, but she grabbed his arms.

"No, just-"

"What?" He asked softly.

"Be inside me." She whispered, and as his eyes met hers, something in them made him swallow, even as he obeyed and pushed gently against her, her legs opening wide for him, and the feeling of the slick warmth between them making him gasp.

"Hope…" He slid inside her, and watched her eyes widen, felt her yield to him, so soft and hot inside, and then he was moving slowly, his mouth on hers as she raked her fingers over his back.

It had been incredible between them from the very first time, and it had only got better, but this felt like a whole other level. Hope was moving with him, her soft skin whispering against his, her little moans into his mouth driving him crazy. As he felt her begin to tremble, he gently pulled his lips from hers and met her eyes instead, their gaze locked as she gasped, and he knew she was right on the edge.

"You're so beautiful like this." He found himself murmuring, because it was true, and without looking away she arched and came apart, and he found himself doing the same, staring straight into those wide green eyes.

There was a strange moment of stillness, as though nothing else existed outside of the two of them, but then he was dropping onto his back, panting, and she was curling into his arms and giggling slightly, and everything was good and normal and easy again, and Wolf kissed Hope gently and exhaled.

"As workouts go," She said after a moment, "I think I preferred the second one."


	11. Babysitting

_Author's note: Something a little sweet for the weekend!_

 _If you're reading and enjoying, why not leave me a quick review?_

 **Chapter 11 - Babysitting**

Wolf swam into consciousness with a very strange sensation, his body directing him that something extremely pleasurable was somehow happening, and he realised that Hope was under the covers, her mouth languorously moving up and down on his cock.

"Fuck..." He groaned, lifting the blankets so he could see her.

"Good morning to you too," She replied, then went right back to what she'd been doing, her mouth tight around him, her fingers teasing his balls.

"Get up here..." He tried, gritting his teeth to keep from losing control, but she answered by moving a little faster, her hand joining the party, and he was left with no choice but to lay back and surrender, letting her drive him to the point of no return, bucking up into her mouth and coming hard as he gasped out her name.

"Mmm." He heard the rustle of sheets as Hope made her satisfied little noise, and opened his eyes as she slid up the bed to kiss him. "Couldn't help myself." She explained with a shrug, and snuggled close as he wrapped his arms around her.

"Not complaining." He replied, still a little dazed.

"I have to get to the hospital," She kissed him again, "Or I might try for a little reciprocation."

"Tonight?" He suggested, but she made a face.

"I said I'd babysit for Rachel." She hesitated, "You could keep me company, if you like?"

"Sure," He shrugged, "I like kids."

Captain Mike Slattery and his wife, Doctor Rachel Slattery (nee Scott) lived in a fairly modest three bedroom home in a pleasant tree lined street not far from the military district. Wolf had been there once before, but Hope never had, and he was secretly a little surprised that Mike and Rachel had entrusted a near stranger to babysitting duties. It all became clear, however, when Rachel opened the front door, looking elegant in a little black dress, but clearly stressed out.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She leaned in and gave Hope a quick hug, then noticed Wolf standing behind her. He saw her expression cycle through surprise and curiosity before she smiled, but she seemed happy enough for him to be there as she explained the situation, ushering them into a spacious but somewhat untidy living room.

"Usually Tom and Sasha are our babysitters, but they're at this same ridiculous dinner, as is every other bloody officer, and Tex and Nina are visiting Kat at Parris Island, and I thought about Ashley, but Tom won't let her drive into the city alone-" She stopped herself as Mike Slattery strolled into the room, resplendent in dress whites.

"Wolf." He nodded in greeting, "Doctor Riley?"

"Just Riley." Hope shook Mike's hand, and the captain turned to his wife.

"Ready?"

"No! I need shoes." She shot an apologetic look at her babysitters, "Can you point Riley to Jamie's bedroom?"

"He should stay sleeping." Mike commented as he led Hope down the hallway, Wolf trailing behind feeling a little awkward. "This is his room." He pushed the door open halfway so they could see a glimpse of the sleeping toddler. "If he wakes up, there's milk and juice in the fridge, but generally he just needs a little reassurance and he'll go right back to sleep."

Hope nodded. "No problem. I'm the same myself."

Mike shot her a grin, and Wolf felt a strange pang of something almost like jealousy, however ridiculous that was.

"You've seen the living room," Mike continued, "Kitchen's right next to it, help yourselves to whatever. We'll be back before midnight." He smiled at Hope again and then turned to Wolf. "Don't kill my kid."

Wolf matched Mike's straight face and nodded, and the older man clapped him on the shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Wolf saw Hope smile.

Once Mike and Rachel had left, Wolf sat down on the couch while Hope flicked through their DVD collection.

"Die Hard!" She exclaimed, pulling out the disc.

He laughed. "Alright, but if the kid wakes up, we have to turn it off. That movie could scar him for life."

"I watched it all the time growing up." She protested, and he smirked.

"Trying to prove my point?"

She answered by rapping him over the head with the DVD case, and he decided not to point out just how much that could support his argument.

As neither of them had a TV, this was kind of a treat, and Wolf found himself remembering his teenage years as he sat with his arm around Hope, fingers idly playing with her hair as they watched the movie. She was clearly having similar thoughts, as she turned to him with a grin.

"Are you thinking about putting the moves on me?"

He laughed, "Maybe. Been a long time since I made out with a girlfriend who was babysitting!"

"Oh, I never used to let my boyfriends come over. I was much too well behaved." She smiled up at him. "I figure I could make an exception though..."

He leaned in and kissed her slowly. "Yup, still feels like I have to worry about getting caught."

She laughed, "Mike seems like he might be a pretty scary prospect on that front."

"No, he's a good guy." Wolf told her. "One of the best."

"Rachel told me how they met, on the Nathan James. I love that story."

"Yeah, it was all going on right under our noses, none of us suspected a thing."

"Kind of romantic." She commented.

"I suppose." He kissed her again. "Though a destroyer isn't the most romantic setting I could think of. Elevators on the other hand..." He grinned and she laughed.

"Yeah, it's all about the elevator now. Ships are so two years ago."

A little while later, Hope went to check on Jamie, and when she didn't return after a few minutes, Wolf followed to check on her. He found her gently tucking the blankets in around the sleeping boy.

"He kicked them off." She whispered, carefully brushing the hair back from Jamie's forehead. "His feet were freezing."

Something about the tender way she touched the toddler made Wolf's chest twinge, and he watched as she adjusted the night light and made sure the battered teddy bear was propped up just right on the pillow, so it would be the first thing Jamie saw if he woke up.

As they settled back down on the couch, he was about to ask her about her experience with kids, but then a thought suddenly occurred to him, one he could hardly believe he hadn't considered until now.

"Hope..."

She looked up at him. "Mister Wolf?"

"We don't use condoms." He said. He knew he should have thought about it before, but their first time had happened pretty unexpectedly, and he supposed he'd just let her take the lead from there.

"Well, I was wondering when you were going to ask about that..." She glanced up at him, biting her lip. "The truth is, I'm desperate to have a baby. Your baby." She looked away, her teeth still working her lip.

Wolf's mouth sagged open as a thousand panicked thoughts raced through his head, and then he realised with a rush of relief that the reason Hope was biting her lip was to avoid smiling.

"You're joking." He croaked.

"Of course I am! Come on Mister Wolf, like I would do something like that! I'm on the pill!" She was laughing, but as his heart rate slowed down, he registered that there was something under the laughter.

"I mean," She continued, "A girl doesn't necessarily expect a reaction of such blind panic, but..."

"Ah, come on, babe." He said firmly, finding his voice again after the shock, "I love you, but it's way too early to-" And then he stopped dead as he realised what he'd said, and took in Hope's open mouthed reaction.

"You love me?" She asked after a moment, in a surprisingly small voice.

"Yeah." He answered, because as soon as he'd said it, he'd known it was true.

"Really?" She was giving just the slightest hint of a smile now, and he nodded.

"Really. I love you." He said it again, because it felt so unexpectedly good.

"Well thank god." She swiped a hand across her forehead in mock relief. "I thought I was alone on the love boat." She laughed and threw herself into his arms, "I love you, Mister Wolf."

And then he closed those arms around her and kissed her breathless, right there on the Slatterys' couch.


	12. St Louis

_Author's note: Sorry for the unscheduled break - life kind of got in the way, and I also got a little stuck on where to go next. Thankfully the amazing Starfoxtwin inspired me, so here we are, back again, with the next chunk of this story._

 _If you're reading and enjoying, please do let me know with a review. It really helps to know people are on board, even if you just say that!_

 **Chapter 12 - St Louis**

It wasn't unusual for Tom Chandler to ask Wolf to come in for a meeting at military headquarters, but there had been something in Tom's tone that had him thinking about it a little more than usual as he made his way to the mansion that had been converted to the command centre for the country's military. He thought about sending Hope a message, but decided to wait and see what the CNO had to say first.

Tom's large office was shared with his Vice CNO, Mike Slattery, but the former XO's desk was empty when Wolf entered the room.

"Mike's in Norfolk for a few days." Tom explained as Wolf took a seat across from him, "We've got some issues there, which is actually why I've asked you here." He sighed, and Wolf saw his glance stray to the framed photographs of his wife, Sasha, and their children, before he reached for a stack of folders in his in-tray.

"As always, since you're not actually a member of the US Navy, I can't order you, I can only ask you," Tom continued, passing across a folder stuffed an inch thick with papers. "But trust me, Wolf, I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important. This is the latest report on the progress of our specialist training at Norfolk, and to say there are gaps would be an understatement. The program needs someone with your experience, which bluntly means you. If we don't start training people effectively, you'll remain the only diver with your level of EOD experience, and that puts us all at risk."

"I understand." Wolf picked up the folder, but then found himself hesitating. "How long are we talking?"

Tom sighed. "A month, maybe two. I realise that on the personal front-" He stopped, clearly registering Wolf's surprise. "Rachel Slattery is, quite literally nowadays, the world's biggest gossip." He clarified, "So I'm aware you're in a relationship. But transport is a lot easier now, so I'm sure you'll have the opportunity to fly back and forth a couple times." He smiled wryly, "It's hardly comparable to an old fashioned deployment."

"No, sir." Wolf agreed. He knew he would miss Hope, but he also knew that both of them were realists, and more than capable of surviving a couple of months apart. "I'm happy to do it."

"Well alright then." Tom looked relieved. "There are some things we should discuss in that case..."

Since Hope's roommate was still out of town, Wolf had all but moved in to her apartment, and knowing she was due to come off shift right around now, he drove straight there from the mansion after finishing his meeting with Tom, letting himself in and immediately registering the sounds of running water and singing from the bathroom. Smiling despite the thoughts churning in his head, he took off his boots and walked softly towards the source of the noise.

" _So make lots of noise, kiss lots of boys…_ "

Hope had a good - and loud - singing voice, and he pushed the door open to see that she was dancing in the shower as she sang, her naked behind facing him as she wiggled her hips.

"… _or kiss lots of girls if that's something you're into…_ "

He was about to clear his throat when she span around and he realised she'd been perfectly aware he was there, as she grinned and used a shampoo bottle like a microphone, continuing to sing as she beckoned him with her other hand.

" _Follow your arrow wherever it points, just follow your arrow wherever it points_!" She threw her head back and then bowed as she finished the song. Wolf laughed and opened the shower door, pulling her into his arms even though he was still dressed and she was soaking wet.

"I thought you'd take your clothes off," She laughed, but he shook his head and kissed her. Tempted as he was, it felt wrong to hold off on telling her his news.

"We need to talk, babe."

"Words no woman ever wants to hear." Her tone was light, but he saw a flash of worry in her eyes.

"It's okay." He tried to reassure her, "It's just work stuff. Get done in here and then we'll talk."

When Hope came through to the living room ten minutes later, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, her damp hair hanging loose around her face, she still looked just a little apprehensive. She sat down beside him on the couch and he watched her take a deep breath.

"Out with it, Mister Wolf."

"Admiral Chandler's sending me to Norfolk for a month or two. They need me to train some divers there."

"That's it?" Hope's expression cleared immediately. "I thought you were going back to Australia."

He almost laughed in surprise, "Why would I do that? I told you, my home is here now."

"I know, but... don't you still belong to their navy? Can't they order you back?"

He thought about describing the decimated state of the Australian Navy, but it felt somehow disloyal, so he moved on instead. "Actually, that was the other thing the admiral talked to me about."

She reached for his hand and interlaced her fingers with his. "Going back?"

"No, staying here. Taking on dual nationality. Joining the US Navy for real. He's talked it all through with the new Secretary of State," Wolf felt a little of the same sense of incredulity he had when Tom had told him, "He's offering me a commission, and everything that comes with it..." He watched her face for a reaction, but she didn't give anything away.

"So what do you think about that?" Her tone was perfectly neutral, which he figured had to be a skill taught at medical school, but it was pretty disconcerting when he was already wrestling with this.

"Right now I don't really belong to either Navy, and that's got a few perks I guess," He articulated the thoughts that had been churning in his mind for the last hour or so, "But honestly? I miss it, being fully in. It's hard to explain-"

"Not to me." She said quietly. "Military family, remember? I might not be in it, but I get it."

He felt a surge of gratitude, "Of course you do. But if I do what Tom - Admiral Chandler - is suggesting, I couldn't say no to missions or deployments like I do now. If they order me to Asia, or Europe, or just to sea for eighteen months, I'd have to go."

"But that's how it always was before, right?" She wrinkled her forehead a little.

"Yeah..." He didn't want to say it, but at the same time, he had to, "But-" And then she smiled, and he realised that maybe he didn't have to after all.

"I'll miss you too." She said softly, "And if you get a long deployment, I'll hate it. But given your particular skills and our current world climate, it isn't that likely, is it?" She gave him a wry half smile.

"No." He agreed. "The short assignments I've been doing for the past year or so, that's where I've been needed. Same as Danny and Carlton." He almost smiled at the thought of working alongside them for good.

"So do what feels right." Hope touched his face. "I'm a doctor, Wolf, I'll always be a doctor, I love it. You're in the Navy, you love it, you need it, and that's just fine. I get it, I promise."

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her slowly. "I love you, Hope Riley."

"I love you, Mister Wolf." She cuddled closer, "When do you leave?"

"That's the other thing..."

She raised her head and pulled back a little, "What?"

"I go tomorrow. It's a shit show, they need me now." He waited for the explosion, but instead Hope started to laugh.

"Oh my lord, it's everything my momma always said about the military and then some." She shrugged. "Well alright. I guess you'd just better make tonight good and memorable then."

As he carried Hope through the bedroom, Wolf felt almost drunk on good fortune.

"You're my lucky charm," He told her as he laid her on the bed.

"You know what my daddy would have told you? He would have said," She put on a gruff voice with a much more pronounced Southern drawl, "You did the work, son, that ain't luck, that's fair reward."

Wolf laughed, even as he accepted the truth of it. "He sounds like a smart guy."

"He was." She smiled, "He'd have liked you, I know that. But," The smile widened, "You did not bring me into this bedroom to talk about my father, or at least I certainly hope you didn't."

"No, ma'am." He chuckled slightly as he joined her on the bed, drawing her close. "I brought you into this bedroom to do this," And then he kissed her.

He knew Hope had meant every word she'd said on the couch, that she really did understand why he was making the choices he was, but somehow her body managed to betray a degree of apprehension about their pending separation, even if her words hadn't. She clung to him tightly as they kissed, gasping softly into his mouth as he slid his hand under her tank top, finding her breast, stroking and squeezing gently as he continued to kiss her. It was Hope who untangled them enough to shed her tank top and pull his shirt off, but then she immediately wound herself around him again.

Wolf looked down at her face, the clear green eyes and those cute freckles, and felt a pang of his own at the thought of being without her. He almost said something, but instead he kissed her again, exploring her mouth, and then her neck, the space behind her ear that made her shiver, her collarbones, as her hands traced through his hair, over his back, gripping his shoulders, and when he reached her breasts and kissed her there, she cried out. Another time he would have taken that as licence to speed towards the main event, but not today. He spent time kissing and sucking, gently biting, moving between her breasts as she writhed on the bed.

Suddenly she grabbed his hand and pushed it between her legs, and he could feel how hot she was even through her sweatpants. He raised his head and looked up at her.

"Please." She whispered, and he swallowed at the look in her eyes, before taking a firm hold of her waistband and yanking her sweats and underwear off in one movement, then burying his head between her legs.

She was burning hot under his tongue, so wet that it was dewing her inner thighs, and he ate her greedily, savouring her taste, imprinting it in his memory, his hands gripping her hips as he plunged his tongue inside her over and over, before drawing back to lick her clit, teasing her, until she was fighting his hold on her hips, bucking against the sheets, and he sucked hard and felt her flood into his mouth as she almost screamed his name.

He rose up over her, rock hard and desperate, fumbling to undo his fly, and he kicked his pants off right before he plunged inside her, sliding home effortlessly into the slick, hot space when his tongue had just been.

"Wolf, oh god, Wolf..." Hope was moaning his name, her hands clawing against his back, and as he looked down at her face he saw her eyes half closed, her cheeks flushed, and he swore he'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and then he felt her fingers grip his ass, pushing him deeper, and he hooked a hand behind her knee, adjusting the angle, until he found the spot inside her that made her eyes fly open and her breath catch in her throat. He stroked into her hard and deep, fighting against the trembling of his own body as he struggled to maintain control, and then she was shouting out for him, squeezing him tight, and he was losing all sense of anything except the heat and softness and goddamn perfection of her, and then it was over and they were laying in a sweaty tangle, breathing hard and wound so close together that he was truly not entirely sure where he ended and she began.

After a moment, Wolf struggled up on to his elbows, and Hope slowly unwrapped her legs from around his waist. Freeing his hand from beneath her, he stroked her face, looking into those beautiful eyes.

"You alright, babe?" He almost laughed as he realised just how understated that question was.

She smiled, "Not sure that quite covers it."

He nodded, and found himself smiling back. "I'm really going to miss you." He admitted.

"Me too, Mister Wolf." She agreed. "Me too."


	13. Telephone

_Author's note: This is kind of a sweet little interlude while I polish the next few chapters!_

 _Thank you for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting._

 **Chapter 13 - Telephone**

Wolf settled back on the narrow bed and picked up his cell phone. His shoulder muscles were still screaming after catching one of the trainees one handed from a fall a few days ago, and he winced at the unfamiliar pain. Tom Chandler hadn't been wrong about the specialist training issues here in Norfolk, and in a lot of ways it was good to be needed, in the thick of things again, and back in the comfort zone of military life. But at the same time, after three weeks he missed his friends and colleagues, the familiarity of life in St Louis, and most of all Hope.

Before he called her, he flicked through the pictures on his phone, lingering on one he'd taken of her asleep on their last night together, tangled in the blankets, her hair spread over the pillow and her lips slightly parted as she slept. He savoured the pang it sent through his chest, then smiled to himself and placed the call.

"Mister Wolf?"

"Hi, beautiful."

"How's it going?" She asked, and he heard the thread of concern in her voice. "How's your shoulder?"

"It's fine," He lied, "Much better."

"That's good." She sounded relieved, and his conscience prickled at lying to her, but he didn't want her to worry.

"Are you at home?" He asked, to change the subject.

"I am. Well, your place, actually." She hesitated, "I was craving some privacy."

Hope's roommate had returned to St Louis shortly after Wolf had left, and the incessant talking that she had once found soothing now seemed to irritate the hell out of her, something which Wolf secretly found just a little amusing. What he hadn't found amusing, however, was the roommate's habit of interrupting Hope repeatedly during his phone calls with her.

"That's fine, babe. I told you, use the place however you want," He reassured her, picturing her laying on his bed.

"I saw Eric Miller today," She told him, "He's doing really well."

"Yeah," Wolf tried not to laugh, "He told me he'd seen you."

"Oh really? Let me guess, he sent you a text message about my ass?"

He gave in and chuckled, "Not quite, but close. He called you my 'very fine girlfriend'."

"I'll take that." She laughed, "Since I don't have you around to tell me I'm pretty."

"You're so much more than pretty."

"Why, thank you. So are you." She laughed again. "And you're always warm. I never noticed how cold my feet get in bed til you were here to warm them up."

"Glad to be of service." Then he had a thought, "Hang on, did you steal my socks?"

"Um…" She sounded a little sheepish, "I might have accidentally kept a pair or two."

Wolf laughed. "You could have just asked, babe! I really thought I'd packed more."

"I'm sorry. I like to wear them in bed is all."

"Now I'm picturing you in nothing but my socks." He savoured the mental image for a moment.

"Oh really?" There was a slight purr in her voice. "How's that working for you?"

"It's working." He admitted, suddenly realising that this was their first truly private conversation since he'd been away.

Hope had clearly realised the same as she asked, "What are you wearing right now?"

"Uniform. Boots off." He answered honestly.

She laughed slightly, "Ask me what I'm wearing."

"What are you wearing?"

"You remember that silky little camisole?"

"Camisole?"

"Like a tank top, kind of. The blue one."

He swallowed, "The one you don't wear a bra with?"

"That's the one. With the matching panties."

He swallowed again, this particular mental image making it hard to focus, "The ones…"

"…That you said don't qualify as panties because they barely cover anything? Yeah, those ones."

"Fuck," He groaned, "I wish I was there."

"To do what, exactly?" She teased.

"You know what."

"I want you to tell me."

It wasn't that Wolf didn't know what he wanted to do to Hope. He knew in absolute, clear, almost indecent detail exactly what he wanted to do to her. It was just that he couldn't for the life of him articulate it. Not the way she wanted.

"I-" He took a breath, "I want to... touch you." He tried.

"Mmm." Hope sounded pleased with that. "Where?"

"Your-" He hesitated, trying to find a suitably sexy, yet romantic, word, "Between your legs." He settled on, and was relieved to hear a murmur of approval.

"I want to touch you too." She told him.

He was feeling a bizarre mixture of arousal and near-panic as he tried to figure out his response. He reckoned he could muddle through it to please her, but there was no way he could do that if he was trying to, well, please himself at the same time.

"Later," He settled on, trying to make it sound teasing, "I want to take care of you first."

She giggled slightly, "Mister Wolf! You always were a gentleman." He heard rustling, "Just let me get my-" More rustling, and a muttered curse.

"Hope? Babe?"

"Sorry, hang on a second. I can't get these jeans off laying down."

He almost laughed, and then he realised what was wrong with that sentence. "Wait, I thought you were wearing that camo-thingy and panties?"

He heard a slight gasp, then a sigh, then a giggle, "I might have exaggerated just a little bit." She confessed.

"What are you really wearing?" He asked, curious now.

"Jeans and your blue sweater." Her voice was a little resigned. And two pairs of socks."

He couldn't help himself, he started to laugh.

"Don't!" She pleaded, even through her own laughter, "I was trying to get a little naughty."

"I know, and I appreciate-"

"Oh my god!" She exclaimed, "Wolf Taylor, do not respond to my advances by saying you appreciate it!" But she was still laughing.

"Honestly, babe? I'm not sure phone sex is quite my thing." He admitted. "But I do think about you naked a lot."

"Well alright then." She was still giggling, but her tone was affectionate, "I think about you too. Especially in bed at night when I can't sleep."

He had a vivid mental image of her in bed, her hand between her legs, and groaned aloud. "Do you mean, you..?"

"Oh yeah. In my head, you have done some fine and filthy things to me these last few weeks."

Almost without thinking about it, Wolf was unfastening his pants. "Want to tell me a few?"

"Why, Mister Wolf," Her voice was purring again, "Whatever could you mean..."


	14. Norfolk

_Author's note: So I did do a little research for this chapter, but I also figure that post-apocalypse there would be a shortage of equipment, manpower, etc, so things might work a little differently at the Norfolk naval base. So maybe just go with it, okay?_

 _Thank you, as always, for reading, and please leave a review if you like it (or even if you don't!)_

 **Chapter 14 - Norfolk**

Of all the things Dr Hope Riley had expected to find in St Louis, love had definitely not been one of them. Friendship, sure, she'd hoped so; satisfying work, a new start, absolutely. But walking into an elevator and meeting the man she was increasingly sure was the love of her life, well, that was a surprise.

"They creep up on you, these men." Rachel Slattery said with a smile. They were sitting in the hospital cafeteria, Rachel with a pot of tea and Riley with a very strong coffee. Their nascent friendship had taken a leap forward since the St Patrick's Day party, and as Rachel's lab was practically next door to the hospital - and had no canteen - it had been easy for them to start meeting for the occasional coffee break.

"Oh no, Wolf hit me right between the eyes." Riley confessed. "Minute I saw him, I thought 'uh oh, lady, you're in trouble'." She laughed, "He took a little more convincing though."

"So did Mike." Rachel laughed too. "I mean, it took ages for either of us to act on our feelings, but I cracked first."

"What did you do?" Hope asked curiously.

"Oh, you know." Rachel blushed just slightly, "I put myself between him and the door and took my shirt off."

Riley sputtered with laughter, "That'll do it!" She hesitated, then shot Rachel a naughty look, "I went to Wolf's place with nothing on under my coat."

It was Rachel's turn to splutter, then raise her teacup for a toast. "Good for you!" They grinned at each other for a moment before Rachel asked, "How are you managing with him away?"

"Oh, it's alright." Riley tried to brush it off, ignoring a little pang of missing Wolf. "It's not for too long, and we speak every day."

"That's good." Rachel nodded. "Mike and I tried to do that, when he went to Asia. Well, before he was captured." A pained expression flashed across her face.

"It must have been awful." Riley said quietly.

"It was. I was pregnant, which didn't help, and I found out through the TV news, which didn't help either."

"I can't imagine." Riley murmured.

"Anyway!" Rachel exclaimed, "It all worked out in the end. And now he's on land, and provided the world doesn't go to hell in a handbasket again, there won't be another separation like that-" She stopped abruptly and clapped a hand over her mouth. "Sorry, that was so insensitive-"

"It's fine." Riley reassured her, "I grew up in a military family. I was bred for this." She smiled like she believed it, but Rachel was too perceptive for that.

"Really? You're allowed to hate it, you know."

Riley battled with it for a second, but then sighed. "You know what? I never wanted to actually join the service, but I chose ortho as my specialty so I could work with veterans. Rehabilitation, you know? The service was bred into me, I always believed that, and I respect it. My daddy died for this country, so did my youngest brother, and I feel proud about that, I do." She hesitated, "But when Wolf told me he was taking the commission and joining the US Navy, my heart broke just a little bit."

Rachel grabbed her hand across the table, "Of course it did. You can respect the service all you like - I do too - and still hate it sometimes for stealing your man."

Riley looked up and saw Rachel's expression was entirely genuine, even with just a hint of a smile breaking through. She laughed reluctantly. "Thank you. I'd not been feeling too good about it."

"Any idea when he's due back?" Rachel asked.

"Another month, maybe. Depends on progress. It sounds hard, I mean, he doesn't say that, but..." She thought about Wolf's voice on the phone, how tired he sounded.

"I know there are a lot of issues in Norfolk." Rachel agreed, "Mike's there again at the moment. Between you and I," She lowered her voice, "He's worried they're trying to run before they can walk with some of this training. But everyone's so desperate to get the military back up to strength."

Standing on the dockside in Norfolk earlier that morning, Wolf had formed the very same opinion as Mike Slattery. Only it was more that some of the selected trainees were trying to run before they could crawl. He rotated his shoulder with a wince as he tried to ease the discomfort, and looked out with growing despair at the figures in the water.

"Not that way!" He bellowed, "Follow the damn chain!"

Pulling up the hood of his dive suit, he prepared to enter the water.

An hour later, he'd managed to get most of his trainees - all relatively experienced sailors but still novice divers - through the exercise. Today's focus was about learning to manoeuvre skilfully around volatile objects in the water while wearing full kit, and despite supposedly already receiving a few months of training, some were still struggling. He weighed up whether to make them all take a second shot at it, but decided enough was enough.

"Right, ladder time!"

He caught a few groans, but most of the small group started to swim obediently towards the rope ladder hanging over the side of the decommissioned aircraft carrier that had been repurposed as a training hub. On good days, Wolf let them take the easy route out of the water and onto the dockside. On bad days, it was the ladder.

Watching from the water as they took it in turns to make the sixty foot climb, his thoughts wandered, as they often did, to Hope. He hadn't told her yet, but he was almost certainly going to be on a plane back to St Louis for the weekend that night, and he was tempted to just surprise her. As the last trainee reached the top of the ladder, Wolf was trying to picture the look on her face when she opened the door to him.

He focussed back on the task at hand as he took his own turn to climb, still trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder. A weekend of rest would help that too. Carrying the last of the equipment in his other hand, his weight distribution was off, making the climb harder. It might look easy from a distance, but in dive kit and carrying heavy equipment, the climb was a challenge, even for someone as fit and experienced as he was.

As he reached the top of the ladder, Wolf hefted the equipment over and onto the deck, and in that moment, his shoulder gave out completely, his fingers slipping uselessly from the top rung of the ladder, momentum dragging his body backwards. He tried to catch hold of the ladder as he fell, but his hand closed on empty air, and in the helpless seconds before he hit the water, all he could think was, _this is going to hurt_.

In St Louis, Riley and Rachel were finishing up their break when Rachel's phone rang. Making an apologetic face, she answered.

"Mike?" Riley watched as her expression changed, and then Rachel held the phone out towards her. "He needs to speak to you."

Her heart jumping into her throat, Riley took the phone. "Hello?"

"Doctor Riley? This is Captain Mike Slattery."

Riley's throat suddenly felt like it had been squeezed shut completely. Slattery sounded so serious, and that look on Rachel's face...

"Riley, I'm sorry to inform you that Wolf Taylor has been seriously injured in the course of his duties."

And in that moment, Riley couldn't be a doctor, or a military brat, or a pragmatic thinker, or any of the other things that she would have thought had equipped her for a moment like this. All she could do was try to keep breathing.


	15. OR

_Author's note: My medical knowledge is pretty limited, so this is based on internet research and having seen every episode of Grey's Anatomy. But hey, this is fiction, so let's just go with it, huh?_

 _Thank you as always for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting._

 **Chapter 15 – O.R.**

"Lieutenant Taylor?"

The voice was far away, and Wolf decided to ignore it. After all, he was in bed with Hope. But then he registered the noise of the wind, thumping loudly and rhythmically against the window.

"Hope?" He whispered, worried the storm had woken her up, "Hope?" He couldn't feel her, which was wrong because she always slept with at least a hand on his chest, and more commonly her head resting right there over his heart. He fought to open his eyes, but what he saw when he did made no sense. Where the bedroom ceiling should be, there was curved metal, and where Hope should be, there were two men in uniform.

"Don't try to move." One of them said, shouting over the noise, but he couldn't move anyway, and then everything faded again.

Riley had seen patients in far worse condition, but none of them had been someone she loved. And so while she managed to limit her outward reaction to clapping a hand over her mouth, none of her colleagues realised it was to prevent a wail emerging.

"Sixty foot fall into water." The corpsman briefed them as Wolf was transferred from the helicopter to a gurney on the roof of the hospital in St Louis. Riley tried to focus on what he was saying, but her eyes kept being drawn back to Wolf's face - which looked so normal and untouched - and his right lower leg, grotesquely swollen, bloodied and punctured with a sizeable splinter of his own bone. "Multiple fractures of right tib and fib... Shoulder dislocation... Intermittently conscious at scene and on inbound flight..."

When she'd first gone to med school, Riley had flirted with the idea of becoming a trauma surgeon. Being right there in the field, fixing battle injuries, saving the lives of people like her brothers. But she'd realised pretty quickly that while she was capable enough in those intense, firefighting situations when time was against you and everything was improvisation and instinct, her real talents lay in planning and execution, the painstaking work of piecing someone back together once the immediate danger was done.

And so she stepped away, right out of the room where her colleagues were working on her boyfriend, her back pressed against the wall until she found herself sliding down it to sit on the floor. She could hear the voices inside ordering chest films and drugs and shouting numbers and readings, but it washed over her like white noise as her mind continued to flash between the image of Wolf's face, and the one of his leg.

And then something broke through, Dr Morgan's voice, a different tone to the shouting of before.

"Lieutenant, don't try to move. No, don't try to move-"

And before she had time to think, Riley was in the room, shoving her colleague aside, looking down into Wolf's open but cloudy eyes.

"Wolf?" She tried to steady her voice.

"Babe? What-" His face was twisted with confusion but his eyes fixed on hers.

"It's okay, it's okay. You're in the hospital, but it's okay." She was babbling, but she didn't care.

"I fell." He said, "My shoulder..."

"I know, it's okay, you're okay." And then she couldn't help adding, "I love you, and I promise, you're okay."

He smiled, a dopey sort of smile, and then his eyes closed again.

"Riley?" Doctor Morgan touched her shoulder. "Let's step outside."

Dr Morgan was a big man, tall and broad, and at nearly seventy he was still as imposing as ever. Riley had worked with him years ago as a young intern, and had been shocked and delighted to find him in St Louis, not only alive but returned to practicing medicine after ten years of retirement. Like all of them, he'd lost friends and family to the virus, and had seen his survival as a sign that he was needed as a doctor again.

He placed a large hand on her shoulder. "You know that before all this, you would never have been allowed to operate on someone you're so close to, but right now you're the only surgeon in the country who's qualified to do it."

She nodded, "I know." She was almost scared to ask the next question. "How is he, other than the leg?"

Morgan's face creased into a smile. "Lucky, I'd say. I guess he's concussed, but he was lucid enough talking to you, there's no indication of spinal damage or head trauma. The shoulder dislocation looks straightforward, it's just that leg. Must have taken all the impact." He frowned, "You think you can fix it?"

Riley took a deep breath, "Let's look at the X-rays and see."

Outside the operating room four hours later, Riley pushed her hands against the wall, letting her head drop, feeling the blissful stretch across her neck and shoulders.

"Beautiful work, Doctor Riley."

She acknowledged the other surgeon's compliment with a slight nod, but after the focus and clarity of surgery, a host of thoughts were crowding into her mind.

Pinning Wolf's shattered lower leg back together hadn't been all that difficult a task for her in the end - the fractures were bad, but she'd dealt with far worse - but blocking out whose leg it was while she was working on it, that had been a gargantuan feat.

Pulling herself upright and rolling her shoulders, she reached up and pulled off her scrub cap. Her hair felt sweaty, and she realised that the rest of her body was the same. Nervous sweat. That hadn't happened to her in the OR since she was a second year resident.

As she washed away the sweat under a lukewarm trickle of a shower, she was trying hard not to think about showering with Wolf, and especially not how long it might be before they were able to do that again. She could well imagine the months of rehabilitation and frustration that lay ahead of him.

What Riley hadn't considered was embarrassment, and that was in the main what Wolf was feeling as he came round and started to process the situation. He, Wolf Taylor, career navy, had fallen off a ship. And yes, in the moments before impact his instincts had kicked in and helped him to assume the best possible position to enter the water and minimise injury, but here he was with a severely broken leg, and not only had all of his trainees borne witness, but his Vice CNO as well.

And then that embarrassment was compounded, because Hope walked into the room in scrubs, and he realised who it must have been that had pinned him back together. Except that she looked so pleased to see him, and so beautiful, that he was torn completely between being desperate to hold her and desperate to send her away so she couldn't see any more of him like this.

"Hi." She almost whispered. "Remember me?"

And she looked so vulnerable that embarrassment lost the fight, at least for now, and he held out his good hand - the left one - for her instead. She gripped it tight, and he pulled her closer.

"Hi beautiful."

"Do you remember what happened?" She asked softly.

"Most of it." He nodded, but that sent pain shooting through his head and he winced.

"You have a concussion." She warned.

"I guessed." He tried to brazen it out against the pain, "Not my first time."

"What happened, Wolf?"

"Slipped." He answered, hoping she wouldn't push it. But then he remembered who he was talking to. "Lost my grip." He added, on the basis that maybe that would be enough.

"Your shoulder was dislocated." She said, in a carefully neutral tone that annoyed him even though it was clearly designed not to.

"Yeah, well." Was the best he could manage.

He watched her bite her lip, as though she was biting back a comment. "I fixed it." She told him. "And your leg."

"How bad is it?" He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know, but he asked anyway.

"It's got a lot more metal in it than it used to." She answered. "But it'll heal well enough."

"Well enough for the Navy?" He asked immediately, and she hesitated, but then nodded.

"Yes. If you handle recovery properly and don't treat it like you did your shoulder."

Riley could have kicked herself for letting her frustration show, but she was mad, damn it. It was obvious what had happened, his body would have given it away even if the witness reports hadn't. He'd lied about his shoulder, kept pushing it, and it had resulted in a far worse injury.

"Thanks for that." Wolf replied, letting go of her hand and feeling immensely irritated and weirdly hurt at the same time.

"Sorry." But she didn't look all that sorry. "It's just..." She swallowed, her eyes brimming. "You could have died, Wolf!" And then she burst into tears.


	16. Hospital

_Author's note: I promise we're working through this angst and will come out the other side into more glorious smutty romance… eventually!_

 _In case you haven't noticed, notifications aren't working properly at the moment, so please do check you've read all of the new chapters, otherwise this won't make much sense!_

 _Thank you for reading, it really makes my day that you do._

 **Chapter 16 - Hospital**

Wolf stared up at Riley, the tears pouring down her face, and remembered in a rush that this was the woman he loved, the one he'd been desperate to get home to.

"I'm sorry." He said, meaning it, and grabbed her hand. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." She managed through her tears, perching awkwardly on the edge of the bed. "And I shouldn't be crying."

"You can cry, babe, it's okay."

She gave a snotty little laugh. "You'll be crying when you try the food in here."

He chuckled, despite everything, desperately wanting to pull her into his arms. He was so used to being the bigger, stronger one of the two of them, this dynamic was distinctly uncomfortable.

It was as though she read his mind, as she said, "I wish I could climb into that bed for a hug."

"I can shift over?" He tried, but they both knew it wasn't happening, particularly given the protective cage over his leg.

"This is not how I imagined our reunion." Hope wiped her eyes. "Especially the part where I operated on you."

"Babe, this isn't how I imagined _tonight_." He squeezed her hand again. "I was going to fly home to surprise you."

She let out a tiny squeak and the tears started flowing again. "Damn it!" She wiped them angrily this time. "What have you done to me Mister Wolf? I am not the crying kind." Her voice softened, "You were really coming home?"

"I was."

She shot a glance at the door and then leaned in and brushed her lips softly against his. "I missed you." She murmured.

"I missed you." He let go of her hand and stroked her thigh instead. He'd missed touching her so much.

"And I guess," She sat up a little and summoned a slightly wan version of her teasing smile, "You achieved your goal. You did fly home, and you definitely surprised me!"

He laughed, and managed to reach up and touch her face, slightly restricted by the IV lines in his hand. "When can I get out of here?"

"Two weeks, maybe?" She frowned. "Your shoulder's going to make crutches difficult, and your whole body needs to recover from the shock, not just your leg. Plus you have a concussion."

"I feel alright though." He argued, and she laughed, tapping the IV lines.

"Of course you do. We're giving you the good drugs."

"Oh." He felt stupid for not realising before now, but then realised it was probably the drugs making him stupid. "Can you stop them then, please?"

"Why?" Her forehead creased in puzzlement.

"I need to be able to think straight."

"Wolf, you'll be in too much pain to think straight if I stop these drugs. You need them right now."

He opened his mouth to protest, but she kissed him before he could. "You kiss all your patients who argue?" He asked.

"Only the good looking ones." She replied. "Look, I promise to keep the dose as low as possible, but you need to rest and recover and you can't do that if you're in constant pain. Will you please trust me?"

He felt that uncomfortable dynamic again, the awkward mixture of Hope being his girlfriend and his doctor, and currently being in a stronger position than he was, but he nodded anyway. "Okay."

"I'm going to stay here tonight, in the hospital I mean, so if you need me you just call a nurse and they'll come get me."

"I'll be fine." He said firmly, deciding there and then that there was no way in hell he would be calling for his girlfriend in the middle of the night.

"Okay." She smiled. "I have to go check on my other patients, but I'll come back later on, just in case you need something to help you sleep."

Despite the sting of being included in Hope's roster of patients, he couldn't resist commenting, "I thought you said you wouldn't get into bed with me?"

She laughed. "Would that I could." And with one more brief kiss, she was gone.

The next few days were like torture for Wolf. Not because he was in pain - Hope clearly had no intention of letting that happen - but because he was increasing aware of how dopey and slow the drugs were making him feel, and increasingly frustrated by it. He was also frustrated by the indignity of not being able to get up, even to use the bathroom, and the suggestion from one of the nurses that she could help him shave if he wanted was almost the last straw.

He had tried not to take his frustration out on Hope, but it was difficult. He'd refused to allow visitors, because he was damned if he was going to let anyone see him like this, even friends like Danny and Carlton, let alone Tom Chandler or Mike Slattery; and that meant the only person he could really talk to was Hope, and since the only thing he had to talk about was how pissed off he was, he knew she was bearing the brunt of it. Added to that, half the time he wasn't sure if she was going to react as a doctor - and start suggesting medical solutions - or his girlfriend, and that just made him even more irritable.

Riley was reaching the end of her tether, and in desperation called Rachel Slattery, because she hoped against hope that her friend might have some wisdom to bring to the situation, as both a doctor and the wife of a tough military man.

"I don't know what to do." Riley confessed, once again feeling near to tears, and furious with herself because of it. "He's angry at himself and frustrated, and I get it, but I'm struggling too. I'm trying to be his girlfriend and his doctor, and it's hard. He's so damn stubborn!"

"So are you." Rachel said pragmatically. "And I bet Doctor Riley is giving him all sorts of orders that girlfriend Hope wouldn't."

"Exactly."

"Is he still refusing visitors?"

"Yep." Riley rubbed her eyes, exhausted from sleeping in the on call room for five days straight. "It's just me."

"Well, I vote you stop being his doctor, for starters."

"What?" Riley asked in disbelief.

"I know you had to be his surgeon, but there are other doctors there, aren't there? Pass him off to one of them now. Be the girlfriend full time."

Riley thought about it for a moment. "Doctor Morgan could take over, I guess."

"There you are. So do that, go home, have a bath, come back later and see him as his girlfriend. And while you're at home, I'm going to send him a visitor."

"He really doesn't want-"

"Trust me." Riley could hear Rachel's smile. "I know what I'm doing."

"Good morning." Wolf looked up at the sound of a familiar voice, and saw the figure standing in the doorway. "I was looking for the pity party," Tex Nolan said, "And I'm reliably informed I can find it right here."

Wolf sighed, wishing he could turn over to avoid Tex's scrutiny. "I don't want visitors, Tex."

"Ah, grow up. And I can say that, being marginally older than you." Tex strode over and stood at the end of the bed. "So you had an accident and you feel like an idiot, well get over it. I've done stupid things, we all have, and if you let people in here, they'd tell you all about it."

"I'm stuck in this bed, I can't even pee on my own, and they're doping me til I hardly have the coordination to aim the remote at the TV. So sorry if I don't feel like socialising."

Tex whistled, "Oh man, they really weren't kidding about a pity party. You prefer pain to being doped up? Tell them that. And if you want to go to the bathroom on your own..." Tex looked at the sling immobilising Wolf's right arm, then at the door to the bathroom, just a couple of feet from the bed. "Well, I could open the door and you could try to take aim?"

Wolf opened his mouth to retort, but instead he found a chuckle emerging. He caught Tex's eye and both men collapsed into roaring laughter. Tex was leaning on the end of the bed, doubled over with mirth, and Wolf had to clutch at the rail to support himself against gales of laughter.

"Oh, man." He managed eventually, "I think I needed that." He felt lighter, as though the cloud of shame and frustration had lifted away.

Tex wiped his eyes, "Phew. I guess you did. So I'm going to tell you something else while I'm on a roll. According to my good friend Doctor Slattery, you've got a smart, beautiful woman out there who loves you, and you want to be holding onto that with both hands right now. Trust me."

When Riley came to see Wolf a few hours later, she was surprised to find him sitting up fully in bed, the IV and sling both gone, and a tshirt replacing the hospital gown.

"There have been some changes here, huh Mister Wolf?"

"And there," Wolf said, noting with appreciation the tight jeans and fitted tshirt that had replaced her scrubs and white coat.

"I'm not your doctor anymore." She said firmly, "So this is my girlfriend outfit."

"You might need to tell my new doctor that my blood pressure is climbing." He joked, holding out his hand for her. "He's already pissed at me for refusing medication."

"Well, as your girlfriend, I respect your decision." She said, perching on the edge of the bed. "But aren't you in a lot of pain?"

"It's not so bad." That wasn't entirely true, but the blissful clarity of thinking was worth it. "And he says I can try crutches tomorrow. And go home in a few days if I can hop around." He gave her a grin, "I like him a lot more than my last doctor."

She shook her head, laughing. "Watch it. Your surgeon still needs to sign off your release."

"Better keep her sweet then." He squeezed her hand.

"I'm sorry." Hope said suddenly, "Maybe I held you back, but I-"

"It's okay." He interrupted, "You didn't do anything. I was being an arsehole."

"Me being your doctor wasn't helping any." She countered.

He shrugged and quickly hid the wince of pain that resulted, "Let's forget it. There's something else I want to talk to you about."

"Okay..." She looked a little worried, so he dived straight in.

"When I get out of here, I want you to move in with me."

"Into the studio?" She asked.

"I thought we could get something bigger. Something for both of us." He watched her carefully as he outlined the plan he'd been considering even before his accident.

"So you don't mean-" She paused, "This isn't just while you recover?"

He snorted, "No! I'm not looking for a doctor! I'm asking because I like the idea of living with you."

"You're serious?"

"Drug free and completely serious." He stroked her cheek. "I love you, Hope. I want to do this. We were pretty much doing it anyway before I went to Norfolk."

"Okay," She started to smile, "Okay, yes. Yes, please."

He moved his hand to the back of her head and pulled her in for a kiss, relishing the feeling of being able to do that again. "I'll talk to Captain Slattery about it when he comes to see me later."

She raised an eyebrow. "Visitors?"

"Just a few." He kissed her again. "But you're my favourite."

"Good to know." She smiled, and leaned in to whisper in his ear, "You know, I really can't wait to get you home." And then she kissed him, the kind of kiss that reminded him of just how much he'd like to be at home with her.

"You'll have to be in the driving seat for a while." He cautioned, glancing down at his leg.

"Oh, I'm looking forward to it!" She replied.


	17. Home

_Author's note: Ah, back to a bit of smutty happiness…_

 _Notifications are now hopefully fixed, but please do make sure you didn't miss any chapters! I've been posting a lot lately!_

 **Chapter 17 - Home**

"Home sweet home!" Hope sounded a little nervous as she held the door open for Wolf to manoeuvre himself through it on his crutches.

The apartment they'd been allocated had previously been home to Tex Nolan and his wife Nina, before they'd moved outside of the city. In fact, at one point the building had been home to Tom Chandler and his family, and Mike and Rachel Slattery as well. But as the city clearance had expanded - not to mention their families - the previous occupants had moved out, and this particular apartment had remained available.

Wolf found himself walking into an open plan living space, in which he immediately recognised some of his possessions on the bookshelves, and Riley's yellow couch under one of the large windows. The kitchen area had a scarred looking wooden table, and he spotted two chairs that had come from his studio apartment.

"I put most of the boxes in the second bedroom." Hope explained. "I figured we could unpack properly once you were here." She hesitated, "It's not much to look at right now, but-"

"It's great." He interrupted. "Seriously." He looked at the light spilling through the windows onto the polished floorboards. "I like it."

"Did you really never visit when Tex lived here?" She asked.

"I really didn't. We always went to the pub."

She laughed, and he saw her starting to relax. "Well, it's ours now."

He looked towards a short, narrow corridor to the left. "Where's the bedroom?"

"Just down there. Door on the left."

Wolf let her lead the way, following behind on the crutches that he was still mastering. She opened the door and he looked at the bed, the large double that he'd last seen in the middle of his apartment.

"Ahh." He gave a satisfied sigh as he sat down on the edge of it, setting the crutches aside. Looking up at Hope, he saw she was biting her lip. "What is it?"

"Fifty three days." She replied. "We haven't been alone in a bedroom together for fifty three days, and now I'm..." She swallowed, "Damn it, Mister Wolf, I-"

He was filled with a mixture of love and desire so potent it almost took his breath away. "Get over here." He managed, his eyes fixed on hers, "And show me a good time." And he grinned, and she laughed, and then she was on the bed.

Holding Hope in his arms again was like breathing properly for the first time in, well, fifty three days. All the times he'd thought about it, he'd kind of planned to take it slow, but he'd forgotten what the smell of her hair and the touch of her skin did to him, and so within minutes of their lips meeting, he was pulling her shirt over her head, undoing her bra, greedy to feel more of her, see more of her.

Wolf groaned when he finally palmed Hope's bare breast, and he felt the shiver run through her as he did so. "I missed doing this," He murmured, right before he closed his lips around her nipple, sucking gently as she cried out.

He made to kneel up to remove her jeans, but he'd momentarily forgotten about the protective cast strapped around his lower leg, and almost shouted with frustration when he remembered, but she stopped him with a kiss.

"You said I could drive, remember?" She hopped lightly off of the bed, and he savoured the sight of her as she stood half naked, her fingers moving to unfasten her jeans. He quickly stripped off his own t-shirt, and pushed down the shorts he was wearing, which had the advantage of sliding off easily over his cast. Hope bent to pull the skinny jeans over her feet and off, and when she stood up again, his mouth dried at the vision in front of him. So much smooth creamy skin, clad in only a pair of wickedly tiny blue lace panties.

"Mister Wolf." She said in a stern tone, regarding him carefully, just a slight quirk of her lip betraying her. "Where is your underwear?"

"Won't fit over the cast." He said, shaking his head in mock regret. "I'll be going commando for a while yet."

"Well isn't that a shame." The hungry look she had as she stared down at his naked body was almost as arousing as the sight of hers.

"Come here." He held out a hand and she returned to the bed, swinging her leg across him so she was straddling his knees. She bent her head towards his hardness, but he caught her chin in his hand and shook his head. "Babe, fifty three days. I wouldn't last fifty three seconds."

He sat up so they were face to face, and kissed her instead, exploring her mouth as she pressed her bare breasts against his chest. He ran a hand down her back until he reached the edge of her panties, then slid his fingers under the fabric, making her gasp into his mouth as he found the wet heat between her legs.

As he stroked her, she pushed him slowly down onto the mattress, moving until she was perfectly positioned above him, her panties the only thing blocking him from being inside her. He started to pull them to the side, but she leaned in and whispered in his ear.

"Just rip them."

His fingers closed around the fabric and he yanked hard, feeling the thin ribbon straps over her hips give way, and then she was sinking down onto him, taking him inside her, and he almost lost it right then.

She stilled and they both just breathed for a moment, faces close together, eyes locked, and then he tightened his hands on her hips and she started to move.

He guided her upright, wanting to see her above him, but then he almost had to close his eyes because she looked so incredible, her breasts moving gently, her lips parted, her eyes half closed as she rocked on him.

He lifted his hips as best he could and pushed up into her, and she raised her hands to her breasts, cupping them as he groaned, starting to rock a little faster. He was already struggling for control, and when she ran a hand down between her legs and started to stroke her own clit, he really thought he was going to lose it. She was squeezing him so tightly, moving so fluidly, looking so incredibly beautiful...

And then she opened her eyes and looked right into his, lifting herself higher before sinking back down, sheathing him so deep in silky heat, and he surrendered and felt the surge moving through him as he shouted out her name and lost himself inside her.

"Sorry," He gasped, when he could finally speak again. She was still on top of him, her hands resting on his chest.

"Do not apologise." Her face was flushed and she was still moving slightly.

"Stay there." He reached a slightly shaking hand between her legs. "Right there." He found her clit with his thumb and circled it firmly, just the way he knew she liked it, until she threw her head back. "Let go, babe." He murmured, and she squeaked and shuddered and he felt a fresh surge of moisture flood from her as she fell forward and rested on him.

After a few moments, she kissed his chest and then raised her head. "Fifty three days is a lot to make up for, Mister Wolf."

"I know." He agreed.

She leaned up and kissed him, "So be prepared, because that's one down, fifty two to go."


	18. Party

_Author's note: Sorry for the unexpected pause, but at least I left you with some quality smut and no cliffhanger!_

 _Probably not many more chapters left now, but we'll see…_

 _Please leave a review if you enjoy._

 **Chapter 18 - Party**

Wolf was getting used to his new morning view. When he opened his eyes, he saw either the high ceiling of the bedroom, the sunlight coming in through the window, or Hope's face, depending what position he was laying in. Of the three views on offer, he preferred the one with freckles.

Most mornings, he was kissing those freckles goodbye at an early hour, or trying very hard not to wake their owner as she slept off a late shift. But for once they had a whole weekend together ahead of them, he was finally in a walking cast, and tonight they were throwing a housewarming party.

Rolling carefully onto his side, not wanting to wake her, he watched Hope's eyelids flicker but settle closed again, her mouth soft in sleep and her cheeks slightly flushed, and not for the first time considered how lucky he was.

He suddenly remembered the morning she'd woken him up in the naughtiest possible way, and grinned to himself as he contemplated returning the favour. Carefully, he lifted the sheet that covered them both just high enough to facilitate his shuffling down the bed, moving as slowly and softly as he could. He paused for a moment when his face was level with her breasts, but remembered the mission and continued downwards.

He held his breath as Hope suddenly stirred, but to his relief she rolled onto her back and settled again, which only made his plan easier to execute. Reaching an arm across her hips and placing his hand on the bed to brace himself over her, he dipped his head and gently parted her folds with his tongue.

It was hard not to groan as her taste filled his mouth, but he managed it somehow, keeping his movements slow and light as he teased her clit, and then suddenly he felt her tense slightly and knew she was awake. He grinned to himself as she opened her legs wider and lifted the sheet, and he glanced up to see her flushed, sleepy face.

"Mister Wolf?" She murmured.

"Don't worry babe, just enjoying my breakfast." He told her, before going right back to the task at hand.

Having spent the rest of the morning in bed, and the afternoon picking up supplies, Wolf was feeling a bit ambiguous about the party as evening rolled around. On the one hand, it was always good to see friends, but on the other he knew there would be plenty of jokes - however good natured - about his accident and injury, and a part of him would have preferred to just stay in bed with his girlfriend. Hope, though, was full of excitement, and he wouldn't risk saying anything that might compromise that.

"Do you really think the Admiral and Mike will come?" She asked, not for the first time. "I know the protocol is weird, but these days…"

"Well, Rachel said they were coming, right?" Wolf shifted the couch back against the wall. "And even if they don't, we've got Danny and Carlton and Miller-"

"And Miller's new girlfriend." Hope smirked, "Thanks to me."

He laughed, "Of course. And your mates from the hospital."

"And Nina and Tex."

"Full house, babe, you'll see."

Four hours later, Wolf's prediction was proving entirely correct. Their apartment was filled with friends, even Tom Chandler had stopped by for a short while, though without his wife Sasha, who'd apparently lost the coin toss for who stayed home with their chicken-pox-ridden twins. Mike Slattery had appropriated the sofa, his arm wrapped possessively around his wife's shoulders as Rachel talked medical advances with two of Hope's colleagues from the hospital.

Tex and Nina had made use of the same babysitting service as Danny and Kara Green – Kara's mother Debby – and were currently in the centre of a laughing group in the kitchen area, spinning tales of their own time living in this apartment.

Wolf leant against the wall, half listening to the conversation Danny and Carlton were having, and half surveying the room. Earlier Hope had been flitting around making sure everyone had drinks, but now she'd relaxed into conversation with Kara and Alisha Granderson.

She looked incredible, he thought, allowing his eyes to linger on the way her short dress hugged the curve of her hips. It was the same outfit she'd worn for Tex and Nina's party, and if anything she looked even more beautiful tonight than she had then. As if she felt his eyes on her, she turned her head and smiled at him, then she winked deliberately and started moving very slowly towards the bathroom.

He tried not to spill his beer as he quickly set the bottle down on the nearest surface and muttered an excuse about needing to check on something. Making sure that everyone else was too involved in conversation to notice, he followed Hope at a discreet interval to the bathroom, pushing the door open lightly and stepping inside.

"Mister Wolf!" She said in mock disapproval, even as she leaned past him to lock the door, "Why on earth would you follow me into the bathroom?"

"Because I know you too well." He answered, and pulled her close. "So tell me what that wink was about."

"I just thought you might like a little break from socialising." She said with a grin, reaching up to kiss him. "And since our guests all seem to be having a good time, I thought I might give you one."

Once upon a time he might have been just a little bit shocked, but a few months of dating Hope had cured him of that, so instead he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her as she pressed her body against his. It occurred to him to ask why the bathroom, rather than their perfectly good bedroom, but he decided not to bother.

"Quickly though," She breathed into his mouth, "One more drink and Rachel will start spilling the good gossip, and no one wants to miss that."

Laughing, he span her in his arms so she was facing the mirror over the sink, and kissed her neck as he pushed his hips into hers from behind. "Last chance to tell me you're teasing." He murmured, and she shook her head, meeting his eyes in the mirror.

Grasping the hips he'd been admiring from afar only minutes ago, he edged her dress up and pushed her underwear down, relishing his ability to move more easily on his healing leg almost as much as he relished the gasp he elicited from her as his fingers found her centre.

"Knew I liked those boots for a reason," He told her, realising that the spike heels put her at the perfect height for what he was now desperate to do. "Is this okay?" He checked, and she answered by pushing back against him, her hands gripping the sink.

He hastily unzipped his fly and freed himself, sliding his hardness between her legs, feeling her slick warmth as she widened her stance, her eyes still locked on his in the mirror as he slowly eased into her, his breath hitching.

"Oh god…" She murmured, and he gritted his teeth not to groan as her tight heat enveloped him. He reached around to stroke her clit as he moved a little faster, and felt her clench around him, pushing back to meet his thrusts, and it seemed like no time at all before he was pressing his face into her shoulder to muffle the sounds he couldn't help making, and her hands were gripping the sink so hard her knuckles were white, and then he felt the moment that she convulsed around him, her mouth opening in a soundless cry, and he pushed deep one last time and let go.

Hope was giggling softly as they adjusted their clothing, and he found himself chuckling a little too. He pulled her close and kissed her softly.

"Why not the bedroom?" He asked at last.

She shrugged, "Housewarming party. This is the only room we hadn't warmed yet."

He was still laughing when she opened the door and strode confidently back to the party.

He lingered for a few moments to get his breathing back under control, and to minimise the chance of anyone noticing their little disappearing act, but as he went to open the door, he heard something that stopped him short. Rachel Slattery's voice, low and confiding as she talked to someone in the hallway.

"It's terrible really. Mike was furious. The way things are now, as though those old rules matter."

"So they didn't get the housing allowance at all?" He recognised the voice as Kara Green.

"Hope's paying for the apartment outright. Apparently being in love and saving someone's life doesn't count for anything unless you have a marriage certificate." Rachel replied. "Thank god it wasn't like that when we first got here, or all of us would have been stuck!"

Wolf sat down on the edge of the bathtub, his head spinning. Surely someone had got the wrong end of the stick. But then he remembered that Hope hadn't shown him any of the paperwork for the apartment, or mentioned anything about bills. Could it be true? Was his girlfriend paying for their apartment without telling him?

Pushing back to his feet, he ran his hands over his face before opening the door. Clearly this was a conversation that would have to wait until after the party, but in the meantime, he really wanted to avoid hearing any more secrets about his relationship from the lips of Dr Slattery.


	19. Fight

_Author's note: Ah, it's hard being a military girlfriend sometimes, believe me…_

 _Thank you, always, for reading, following, favouriting, and especially reviewing. Even a couple of words means a lot, trust me._

 **Chapter 19 - Fight**

In the absence of a better plan, Wolf decided to deal with the rest of the party by carefully avoiding the Slatterys and the Greens, and drinking with Carlton and Miller instead. This did at least come with the added bonus of getting to know Miller's new girlfriend - Nurse Spencer, or Caroline - whom Hope had introduced him to during his hospital stay. The petite brunette seemed a good match for his friend, and Wolf was genuinely pleased to see Miller's puppy dog eyes being returned with such enthusiasm.

Hope came by their corner of the room a couple of times, and he found that he still wanted to pull her close and kiss her, was able to touch her face and check in on her, without feeling the anger he was expecting. In fact, aside from wanting to steer clear of Rachel, he was mainly just feeling a kind of low level disquiet, which he tried hard to ignore and quell with beer.

By the time the last guests left and they finally made it to bed, it was 4am, and Hope was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, her mascara already smudging under her eyes. He looked at her for a little while, testing his feelings again in a blurry kind of way. He settled on confused, but not angry, so he wrapped himself around her and succumbed to sleep.

When they woke up around lunchtime, they were both far too hungover to do much more than stagger to the kitchen and back for coffee and juice, and somehow it was early evening before he felt able to bring up the nagging issue of what he'd heard Rachel Slattery say to Kara Green.

"Babe?"

They were sitting at the table eating fried egg sandwiches that he'd cooked. Hope was still in her cotton robe, tangled hair pulled into a rough topknot from which strands kept escaping, but her face now scrubbed clean of last night's makeup.

"Mm hmm?" She pushed away her empty plate and smiled at him.

"How does the money work? For the apartment?" He asked.

"Please don't worry about it." She said, in that neutral doctor tone that he knew by now meant something about the situation was uncomfortable.

"I'd like to know." He insisted, and she sighed.

"It's a bit complicated. Why don't we leave it til we're not still sweating out alcohol?" There was a wariness in her face that started that anxiety churning in his stomach again.

"No, I want to know now." He took a swig of coffee and grimaced when he realised it had gone cold. "It's important, Hope."

"Okay." She pushed her hands into her messy hair and didn't quite meet his eye. "I guess at the moment I'm paying."

"The Navy assigned this place to us, right?" He said, deliberately keeping his tone calm. "They covered my old apartment outright, so what changed?"

She bit her lip, "Wolf, please don't be mad but... they didn't assign the apartment to us. They wouldn't assign us anything. Nina suggested this place, and I rented it for us. I was going to tell you but-"

"But what?" Anger was starting to simmer now, he couldn't help it.

"You were in the hospital! And it wasn't the right time." She justified.

"I've been out of the hospital almost a month now." He tried to control himself. "If there's been a fuck up with my housing entitlement, you should have let me sort it out. I'm capable of making a phone call!"

"It's not a fuck up." Hope's voice was rising now, "In the new system, you get an apartment for one, because you're one unmarried officer. You reject that, you get nothing. Doesn't matter that it's because you want to live with me, because as nothing but a girlfriend, I don't count! But I wanted to live with you, like you asked me to, so I made it happen."

"You made it happen." He repeated, his head spinning as he got to his feet and started pacing. "Without telling me?! Jesus Christ, Hope!"

"Don't yell at me, Wolf Taylor!" She shouted, pushing back her chair and standing up, "I was trying to do right by us, which is more than the damn Navy has! You can't be mad at me for that!"

"I'm not mad at you for that!" He shouted back, "I'm mad at you for not telling me!"

"Well look what happened when I did!" She retorted.

"Fuck!" He rubbed his hands furiously over his face as he tried to assimilate the information. "They won't pay for my housing if I live with you?" He double checked.

"No, because we're not married." Hope's volume had fallen slightly, but her tone was full of sarcasm, "Apparently another thing the post-apocalypse has in common with the 1950s."

He shook his head, his anger boiling again, but this time in a different direction. "Who did you talk to at HQ? This has got to be some idiot getting it wrong."

"Well, that would be the housing office, the welfare office, and all the way to CNO Admiral Tom Chandler himself." She said, her voice still angry, "Mike checked for me, after I told him and Rachel."

"Well, Rachel certainly feels strongly about it," He threw out, "She was telling Kara and god knows who else all about how I'm a kept man!"

"Oh for Christ's sake Wolf, you don't really think that, do you?!" She asked.

She was right, he didn't, not really, but he was feeling angry and betrayed from more than one angle right now. "I would have liked the chance to pay my fucking share, I know that!"

"Feel free!" She yelled, "I'm not precious about it, I just want to live with you!"

"I want to live with you!" He shouted back, and there was a strange pause while they stared at each other, then he started pacing again, a thought crystallising in his mind.

"So the Navy doesn't think we're serious enough?" He asked, "Well then let's show the Navy how serious we are." He turned to her, "Get your coat. Let's go get married. We'll get married right now, today."

But Hope didn't move, instead she gaped at him for a moment, then let out an incredulous kind of laugh, its edge bitter. "Do you hear what you just said?"

"Yeah, I said let's show the Navy, let's get married." He repeated.

She shook her head violently, and then turned abruptly and headed to the bedroom. He followed her and found her flinging on clothes.

"The only place I am going right now," She said firmly, "Is to Rachel's, until you work out just how many things are wrong with what you just said!"

"Babe-" But in his confusion, the only thing Wolf could think to say was, "Her husband's my senior officer!"

She looked at him with an expression of total disbelief. "Are you serious right now?! I don't even get a say in how I leave this fight, in case _that_ upsets your precious Navy?! Well fine, then I'm going to stay at Nina's, and don't you dare object that she's married to Tex!"

And before he could work out just how this had gone quite so wrong, or what he could say to make it better, the front door was slamming behind her, and Hope was gone.


	20. Truck

_Author's note: I'm in a real dilemma about how this story ends. It could be in about two chapters time, or in about god-knows-how-many. Feel free to express an opinion by leaving a review…_

 **Chapter 20 - Truck**

To add insult to thoroughly confusing injury, Hope had taken his truck, so if Wolf wanted to follow her - which he did - his only option was to take a taxi out of the city to Tex and Nina's place. Since there were only a handful of taxis operating at all in St Louis, he wasn't surprised to be told there was an hour's wait, and he filled the time by trying to work out just where exactly he'd gone wrong.

Sure he'd yelled, but so had she. And they'd both agreed that they wanted to live together, and that the Navy was at fault. Yes, there was the fact that she should have told him sooner, but he figured she understood his feelings about that one. So what exactly was it about his suggestion of getting married that had tipped her over the edge?

Not for the first time, he felt a terrible pang of missing his sister's counsel. What he wouldn't give to be able to call Rain right now and have her explain it to him, because he knew she would decipher it in a second. As he climbed into the shower, he tried to imagine the conversation.

" _I told my girlfriend we should get married and she stormed out."_

" _What do you mean, you told her, Wolfie? You mean you asked her?"_ He could picture her forehead wrinkling.

" _No, I told her. It's the best way to sort out the situation, and-"_

Oh shit. He suddenly no longer needed to imagine his sister's advice to understand where he'd gone wrong, but he could certainly predict what she would say.

" _You proposed marriage as the solution to a problem? Fucking hell Wolfie, no wonder the girl's gone!"_

By the time the taxi drew up outside Tex and Nina's place, he'd pretty much worked out what he needed to say. Whether Hope would want to hear it though, well that was a different matter.

Tex answered the door, his eyebrows raised. "Man, are you in trouble."

"What did she tell you?" Wolf asked.

"She didn't tell me a thing. But she was talking to Callaghan loud enough for me to hear every word." Tex shook his head. "Surprised you can still walk with both feet stuck in your mouth."

"Tex, come on." Wolf pleaded, but before he got an answer, Hope appeared. She'd left the apartment in such a hurry that he hadn't registered what she was wearing, and as he realised she was clad in one of his tshirts, too big on her so that the neckline bared most of her shoulder, something about the sight meant he had to grit his teeth not to lose it before he'd managed to say what he needed to.

"What do you want, Wolf?" She asked, her tone a mixture of frost and hurt.

Tex made a face at him and stepped back inside the house, allowing Hope to join Wolf on the porch as the front door gently closed.

"You." Wolf replied. "Should have said that earlier."

He could have sworn he saw the corner of her mouth twitch. "Explain." She said quietly.

"I'm pissed off about the apartment." He said honestly. "I'm pissed off that the Navy doesn't recognise what we have, because what we have is the greatest thing that ever happened to me." Her mouth definitely twitched towards a smile this time, and it gave him the impetus to continue. "I love you, Hope Riley. Sure it's happened fast, but that's because it's right."

She reached out slowly and took hold of his hand. "Yeah." She said quietly, "I hope so." She looked up at him, and he felt even worse for hurting her when he saw the hint of uncertainty in her face.

"I know so." He took a deep breath. "We shouldn't get married to prove anything to anyone-"

She opened her mouth to speak but he quickly shook his head.

"-We should get married because I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I love you, and the only thing that matters is what you think about that. Not the Navy or anyone else." He watched her face intently, seeing the tears fill her eyes, and the smile break over her face, and then she flung herself at him and despite his still healing leg, he picked her up and kissed her passionately as she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and kissed him right back.

When he finally put her down - because his leg was started to ache, rather than because he wanted to - she was looking ever so slightly puzzled.

"Can I check something with you real quick?"

"What is it, babe?"

"Was that a proposal? Or just an apology? I mean, were you taking back the part about getting married, or…"

He started to laugh. "Oh man, I really didn't do this well, did I?"

She joined in the laughter, but a little warily, "You did good, Mister Wolf. I just-"

"It was a proposal." He interrupted, and then for good measure he added, "So will you marry me?"

Her face cleared and she grinned, "Oh hell yes." And then he kissed her again.

"Shall we go home?" He asked eventually, and she nodded.

"But I need to let Nina know." She said, "I can't just disappear."

"Of course."

"You want to come in, or-"

"I'll wait in the truck." Then he quickly added, "Unless you want to go in and tell them our news, because that's fine, I'll come in-"

She stopped him with a kiss. "Let's not go there just yet. Wait in the truck, I'll be just a minute."

As he sat in the truck waiting for her, Wolf found himself staring at the tree in the front yard, the one they'd had their first fight under at the St Patricks Day party, the same one he'd then done some pretty exotic apologising under… And then Hope opened the passenger door and jumped up beside him.

"You sure you're okay to drive?" She asked, and he cursed.

"I forgot." He said honestly, adding as they swapped sides, "My leg's feeling so much better in the walking cast, I probably could drive."

"Let's save that for daylight in the city, not night time in the countryside, okay Mister Wolf?"

"Remember that tree?" He asked, as they drove past it and out of the gate.

"How could I forget?" She smiled as he laid a hand on her knee. "If I didn't think Tex and Nina would see, I'd get you to repeat history right now."

"Oh really?" He spotted a parking place under a sizeable tree a little further along the road. "Then pull over, Mrs Taylor-to-be."

Hope sputtered with laughter, but she did as she was told.

As soon as she turned off the engine, he reached over and pulled her into his arms, finding her mouth with his and kissing her deep and slow.

"Mrs Taylor-to-be, huh?" She asked, when they came up for air.

"Only if you want. I mean, you can call yourself whatever you-"

She stopped him with another kiss. "Mrs Taylor works just fine." Her eyes were locked on his, and he saw that vulnerability that she so rarely showed.

"I love you, Hope." He told her instinctively, and she suddenly scrambled across the seat and landed in his lap.

His hands found her waist, holding her tight as he kissed her neck, her shoulder, tugging the neck of her tshirt aside with his teeth so he had more skin to sample. He pushed his fingers into the sides of her cropped sweat pants, taking advantage of the stretch waistband to cup her ass in his hands, kneading gently, as she bent her head to kiss him.

"Babe..." He murmured, something about the softness of her skin and the sweetness of her kiss making him revise his plan, "Let's not do this here. Let's go home."

She pulled back just a little to look at him, "Mister Wolf? Are you serious?"

"I want-" He paused and let the words come to him, "I want to make love to you babe, in our bed, not celebrate this with a fuck in the truck."

"What's wrong with both?" She asked, but her eyes were soft and she was already climbing off his lap.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it tight. "Let's go home." He repeated.

A few minutes after they pulled away, Wolf's phone beeped with a text message, and he couldn't hold back his laughter as he read Tex's words: _Man, we would have offered you a bed if you'd asked._


	21. Always

_Author's note: So this is it folks, the final chapter. It feels right to me to leave this particular story here, though no doubt this pretty pair will pop up in other stories in the future._

 _Thank you as always to the ladies of the Writers Block Party for inspiration, encouragement and support; to the serviceman in my life for tolerating me criticising the service in this story (just a little bit) and picking his brain about military matters; and to everyone reading, reviewing, following and favouriting - it's appreciated more than you know._

 **Chapter 21 - Always**

In the early hours of the morning, Wolf lay facing Hope in bed, watching the way the moonlight from the open window played on her face as she smiled at him, a smile full of love and satisfaction.

"What are you looking at?" She asked softly.

"You." He reached out and stroked her cheek, and she turned her head slightly, planting a kiss in his palm. "I'll buy you a ring tomorrow." He told her.

She kissed his palm again, "I don't need a fancy ring, Mister Wolf. I've got the man, that's enough."

"Maybe I want to give you a fancy ring." He tried.

"I'll just take the wedding ring," She leaned in and kissed him, "Soon as you want to put that on my finger."

"Better start planning the wedding then." He watched carefully for her reaction, sensing a strange kind of reluctance.

"About that..." She shifted a little closer, her body meeting his, and her teeth biting her lower lip, "You were married, before. What was your wedding like?"

"Quick." He said honestly. "I copped a ton of shit from my mum because it was all last minute before deployment. I mean, everyone was there, but it was just a quick ceremony and then the pub after." He found himself smiling at the memory of his mother's reaction, "She told me she'd had our weddings planned out since birth, and I was ruining it. There was supposed to be a whole lot more fuss. She wasn't too keen on the girl, either; guess she was right about that."

Hope smiled a little, but there was something in her eyes that made him pull her closer still. "My momma had my wedding all planned out too. Where I was the only girl, you know? My brothers would walk me down the aisle all together, there'd be a string quartet and flowers everywhere and a big white dress - whether I wanted one or not." She pressed her face into his chest, muffling her next words as her voice broke, "How do we get married without them?"

He stroked her back, a little at a loss for what to say, pain of his own stitching through his chest. "Maybe on our own?" He suggested finally. "Just you and me? We can have a party after if you want, but how about we just say the words to each other in front of a judge, and then get on with being married?" He kissed her hair, "Then we can make a new family of our own."

She was so still in his arms that for a second he thought he'd blown it, but then she raised her face and kissed him with sudden passion, and he could taste the salt from her tears on her lips, even as he felt the heat of her body pressing into his.

He kissed her right back, holding her as close as he could, his arms locked tight around her, her soft naked skin still a little slick with sweat from their earlier lovemaking. She pulled at his shoulders, encouraging him to move over her, wrapping her legs around him as he did so.

"Hope," He murmured, "Slow done babe, it's okay."

She drew back just a little to look at him, and his heart lurched.

"It's okay," He said again, "It's all going to be okay."

She nodded slowly, unwrapping her legs from around his waist, and as he bent his head to kiss her, it was soft and slow.

"I love you," He murmured, "We're going to have the best life, I promise."

"I promise you too. I love you Mister Wolf, always." Her big green eyes were looking right into his, and this time it was Wolf who drove the passion, taking her mouth in a fiery kiss, his hands threading into her hair as he pushed his hips into hers, feeling her legs spread wide for him as he searched out her entrance, groaning when he slid home.

She clung to him, gasping in his ear, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he thrust deep. He felt almost overwhelmed by the touch of her skin, the smell of her hair, the way this smart, beautiful, amazing woman felt in his arms, and for a second he couldn't quite believe how lucky he was.

"Wolf…" She moaned, arching against him, and he found her clit with his thumb, his fingers gripping her hips as he felt her tighten around him, his gaze focussed on her face, the flush spreading across her freckled cheekbones as she tipped her head back and cried out.

He could only manage a groan in response as he pressed his face into her neck and let go, staying there and tasting the salt on her skin as his hips gradually came to stillness and her fingers slipped from his back.

He finally raised his head, his arms wrapping around her to keep her close as he rolled onto his side, his lips seeking hers for a slow, soft kiss.

"Let's get married tomorrow." He murmured, his lips still touching hers, "Let's just do it."

"You want to get married on Independence Day?" Her mouth quirked into a grin, "Isn't that kind of ironic?"

He grinned back, but pressed on, "There's the garden party at HQ in the afternoon. If we get married in the morning, we can make that the reception."

She giggled, "Thrifty, I like it."

"I like you." He countered. "Love you, in fact."

"Why Mister Wolf," She fluttered her eyelashes, "I do declare!"

And the sound of their laughter floated through the open window and out into the night sky, as Wolf Taylor and Hope Riley planned their future, together.

 **THE END**

 _ **Wolf and Riley will return in 'Independence Day', coming in or around July 4**_ _ **th**_ _ **…**_


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